There are several ways to share your course with your group members. See the Quick Start instructions for the most basic way to invite people to your course and browse the other options if you’re curious about further options.
Quick Start
1. Send invitations by email
Open your course. You should see the Edit/Teach toggle on the left of the page set to "Teach" mode.
Now, select the "Invite" button from the top of the Path.
Enter the email address of each person you wish to invite. To invite many people at once, just add multiple emails with commas in between them.
Optional: If you'd like to include a personal message along with your invites, choose the "Add a personal message" link and type your message.Finally, ensure that the correct role is selected. Most of your group members will be “learners” taking the course, and this is the default setting. You can also invite individuals as moderators or teachers to help you facilitate the course.
Now, just hit the "Send Invites" button. Your people will receive their invitation in their inbox in moments.
💡Tip: you can also use the “Invite staff” button when inviting other staff members in the moderator or teacher role to help you facilitate the course.
Other ways to share
2. Share a private invitation link
Use a shareable link to invite someone to a course using an outside email server, or a chat message, or anywhere you can post a hyperlink.
Select the "Invite" button from the top of the Path.
Select "get a shareable link."
Choose the role you'd like to invite people to join with.
Use the "Copy link" button to copy the link into your computer's clipboard.
Now simply paste the link as a hyperlink anywhere you'd like to use it.
💡 Tip: if you're inviting someone who's already signed in, they'll be enrolled instantly as soon as they click the link. If they're not signed in, then they'll be asked to sign-in or create a new login if they're brand new.
How to check if your invites were sent, failed, or accepted
If you're wondering if someone received your invite yet (or perhaps the dog ate it), then here's how to check the status of all the invites you've ever sent to a particular group:
Open the Invite screen using the "Invite" button at the top of the Path or from the Learners screen.
Now, select the "View sent invites" link in the header area just under the Group name. This will open the Sent Invitations screen.
The Sent Invitations screen shows you every invitation you've sent. You'll see the person or email invited on the left as well as the role you invited them to.
On the right side, you'll see the status of the invite:
Pending means the email hasn't been sent yet.
Sent means it has been sent to their email address.
Failed means that their email provider rejected the email and they didn't receive it. If this happens more than once for the same person, then sending them their personal invitation link is a good alternative (see instructions for how to do this below).
Accepted means that they received the email and joined your course Group.
For each invitation in the list, you also have a few options found under the three vertical dots on the very right side:
Resend invitation will send the same email again.
Revoke invitation will make the link already sent no longer work.
Copy invitation link will copy a private invitation link just for that person to your clipboard to share with them separately. This is a good option if the normal email invite isn't going through because it's being blocked by their ISP or SPAM filter.
3. Make your course available to members for open enrollment.
By default, your group will be private and Invite-only.
You can optionally make your course Members-only. This means that anyone who has a login for your Belltower account can self-enroll as a learner from your Library page in your account. This is a good option if you already have a large, steady membership, or if you want to allow people to choose from a variety of courses.
To change a course from Invite-only to Members-only, open the Course Settings and select Cohort settings. Select Members rather than Invite-only under “Who can join?”
If you’d like to give access to your account to someone who doesn’t have a login yet, here’s how to invite them to create a login:
Select “Community” from your account’s main menu.
Select the Invite button.
Invite people to join your account in the member role. They will be able to self-enroll as learners in courses you’ve made visible to members
Also see: How to invite admins and editors.