CatechismClass.com New User Manual In This Manual You Will Learn: How to Register and Create a User Account How to Navigate the Website How to Use the Adult/RCIA Materials How to Purchase Lessons How to Add Students How to Use the Lessons How to Take Quizzes Most Frequent Tech Support Questions and Answers Introduction Welcome, and thank you for choosing CatechismClass.com. We are extremely excited to provide a unique service that no other service provides. Whether you are a parent, catechist, pastor, parish, homeschooler, or an individual, you can be certain that our programs will not only provide you with authentic Catholic teachings but also provide them in an understandable, useful, and interactive manner. We are pleased to have the support of the Pontiff Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI and numerous other clerics. Our service is also ranked with the utmost rankings for fidelity, resources, and usability from Catholic Culture. Prayer to St. Charles Borromeo, Patron of CatechismClass.com O Saintly reformer, animator of spiritual renewal of priests and religious, you organized true seminaries and wrote a standard catechism. Inspire all religious teachers and authors of catechetical books. Move them to love and transmit only that which can form true followers of the Teacher who was divine. Amen. Page 1 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 How to Register and Create a User Account Look for the Register Tab on the Navigation Bar. Click this to open the registration form. You may pick a “username” of your own choice… (Please refrain from using an email address as your username, because we will soon be prohibiting the use of email addresses in this field, and you will eventually need to change it again at that time). Page 2 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 You may choose a “password” of your own choice. Please note that passwords MUST be longer than 6 characters, and MUST have at least one Capital character within it. Please note that both usernames and passwords are Case-Sensitive After answering all of the required entries on the form, click “Register” to create your new account. How to Navigate the Website Now that you have created your account, the first step to using the account is to log in. You can log in immediately upon creating your account. You will see this “Log In” screen. Enter your newly selected ‘username’ and ‘password’. (If you choose, you may check the ‘Remember Me’ box; which will allow CatechismClass.com to log you in instantly upon your next arrival at the site.) Click the “Login” button to continue. After a successful Log In, you will see your “Welcome Screen”. Here you will notice that it includes your name and email-address that you have registered. [A side note: If you forget about the case-sensitivity of usernames and passwords, you will have only 5 tries before the account will be locked out for security reasons.] Page 3 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 If you haven’t yet logged in, or if you haven’t checked the “Remember Me” box, you will first see the Main Screen when arriving at CatechismClass.com. The next step in using CatechismClass.com is to familiarize your self with the layout of the Website. Main Navigation: This area contains links to (About) company information, (Courses) lessons and courses, (Endorsers) those who have acknowledged our site, (Guarantee) statements of our Faithfulness to the Church, (RCIA) a direct link to our returning Adult Program, our ( F.A.Q.) frequently asked questions, and (Contact) our Support Ticket and Contact Information link. Login Area: This area is where you log in. Once logged in, this section will shift to contain your links to your lessons and your quiz scores. It also contains links to change your personal information profile, your password, and to log out when finished. If you are a student, an administrator, or a parent of children that you’ve enrolled as your own students, this section will also display the links to access the information on your current students. [A side note: Under the Username and Password windows on the Login Screen are links to help you for lost Passwords or Usernames. More will be mentioned on this later.] Page 4 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Content Area: This area contains the main information of the site. It will show the content of the lesson that you select for online learning, the search results of any lesson search you may have made, the quiz scores of lessons that you have already taken, the student information of your students if you are a parent or coordinator, etc. It will also show the information for any page for which you have clicked a link. Information Links: The section contains additional links that help make additional information easy to find. Clicking on any of these links will show the page in the content area. Lost Username and Password Links: Passwords: To use the Lost Password Link, you must first put your ‘Username’ in the Login window… this is how the database will find you to send a ‘Reset Request’ link… You must respond to that link to reset your Password. If your email address has changed since you had first registered (you will know this by the ‘info screen’ in the Reset Request) then you must use a ‘Support Ticket’ to inform us of this change before resetting a password will work. Usernames: To use this link, just click on it. You will be asked for your email-address. This must be the same one you used when you first registered; that is where the reminder will be sent. If your email has changed since you registered, you must use a ‘Support Ticket’ to inform us of this change before this reminder will work. The Support Ticket can be found on the Contact Tab. Page 5 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Lessons CatechismClass.com is based on lessons. Every item that we sell is a lesson and related lessons are grouped together into our series and packages. What exactly is in a lesson? Our lessons follow a 7-step format. Each lesson will guide you through: 1. Introduction (Saint for the Day, Description of the Lesson Topic) 2. Opening Prayer (For adults a decade of the Rosary; for children it is another prayer) 3. Lectionary (Link to Daily Readings and mention of Scripture that concern the lesson topic) 4. Catechism References (as they relate to the lesson's topic) 5. Lesson (Explains and expands upon the Lectionary and Catechism in light of Catholic teaching, beliefs, etc.) 6. Activity (Designed to reinforce the lesson) 7. Closing Prayer (For adults the Divine Office; For children it is a decade of the Rosary) Each lesson also ends in a quiz. Quizzes form a way for priests, parish religious education directors, parents, etc. to ensure that their students are completing the material successfully. Courses To browse all lessons available for your purchase, you can click the Courses Tab on the main navigation section. You will also find a browsing tool in your “My Lessons” screen if you haven’t yet purchased any lessons. You will notice that, for your convenience, hovering your mouse over any Course Icon on this page will offer a brief description of that course. You may click on the Icon to obtain the full description and ordering information for that course, including all of the lessons that are contained within the course. Additionally, clicking on any individual lesson within a course will offer the same description and ordering info for that individual lesson. Page 6 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 From the Courses Tab, select an Icon for the course which interests you. After selecting an icon for a Package or a Series, you will then open the listing for that selection. Page 7 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Packages A ‘Package’ will display all of the ‘Series’ and all of the ‘Lessons’ that are contained within it. Likewise, a ‘Series’ will display the entire list of Lessons’ that are within it. From this page, you can directly “Add to Cart” your selection, or investigate the description for each Series or each Lesson individually by clicking on its individual link. Each Series or Lesson can be added to the Cart individually from its page... however, it is recommended that you take note of the savings that is built into the purchase of a Series or a Package when compared to accumulating all of the individual Lessons that comprise that Series or Package separately. [A side note: We will describe the use of the Shopping Cart in a subsequent section.] Page 8 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 To browse the lessons that you have purchased and have access to, just log in, select the “My Lessons” link on the “Welcome Screen” – the content area will then show your lessons. Clicking on the link to any Lesson on the list will then take you to the first page of that Lesson so that you can begin your learning. Page 9 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Series/Courses A Series is a group of related lessons on a single topic. To browse the available Series, you can click the Courses Tab on the main homepage of the website. There are benefits for buying Series rather than individual the Lessons. The Series are offered through CatechismClass.com for $24.99 for each of the children’s Series (Grades 1 – 8). The High School student’s curriculum is divided into two semesters. The first semester retails for $19.95, while the second semester is available for an additional $14.95. There is an additional packaging of children’s courses in the Home School offering. Home Schooling Level I combines Grades 1 – 4; Home Schooling Level II combines Grades 5 – 8; and Home Schooling Level III combines Grades 9 – 12 (each of which offer a 20% savings over individual courses). The Adult Program includes six Series offered at $11.50 each: The Mass, The Sacraments, The Rosary Mysteries (aka. The Life of Christ), The Old Testament, The Ten Commandments, and The Creed. However, if you purchase all of these Series together in the entire Adult Package, you only pay $57.50! In essence, you get one of the Series FREE. Page 10 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Discount Offer: If you purchase any 1st – 12th grade series, you are entitled to purchase the Adult Course Materials to use as a teacher’s manual at a 15% discount. These materials are highly suitable for that purchase, since the individual grade programs were designed and modeled after the Adult Course was created. While the Adult Course typically sells its 6 series for $57.50, your purchase when combined with any child’s course will receive a 15% discount. As you can see, an individual series page will list the contents of the “Included Lessons.” For example, if you need materials for your 3rd grade class, simply click on the 3rd Grade Program from the Courses Page to see the contents. If you want more details on any of these individual lessons, as well as a preview of these lessons, simply click on the lesson title. You can always hit the back button in your browser to return to the series page. With the 3rd Grade Program, you will notice that the program offers 29 lessons: A total of 9 lessons on the Old Testament and 20 lessons on the mysteries of the Rosary and the life of Jesus Christ. Page 11 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 If you had purchased each of these lessons individually, you would pay $1.99 for each lesson or a total of $57.71. By purchasing the 3rd Grade Series, you pay the standard series price of $24.99 and save $32.72. The amount of savings may vary from series to series because each series has its own number of lessons, but all of our courses are priced to offer considerable savings if you purchase the series, as opposed to buying each lesson individually. Additional Abilities: If your parish or Diocese allows you to use outside materials and receive credit through them, you may be required to use a curriculum that meets certain requirements. We are able to easily rearrange our lessons and customize them, in order to provide you with a unique series that will fit your specific needs. As an example, the Diocese of Toledo selected their own required materials from our list that each grade is supposed to teach. We have revised some of our information to provide those persons with a unique series, tailored to fit their needs. If you have special needs or wish to create a customized series using our lessons, simply contact us via our support ticketing system. Book Summaries We offer courses including Sacramental Preparation Lessons, Lessons on the New Translation of the Roman Missal, High School Lessons, Ethical Courses, Children’s Lessons, and other topics. But another area in our catalogue which may be of interest is our Book Summaries. Specifically, we offer book summaries of spiritual and contemporary Catholic classics. What is a book summary? Book summaries should not be confused with book reviews. CatechismClass.com's book summaries are eight or more page reports that present you with all the main points, highlights and arguments from a Catholic book. Who reads CatechismClass.com's book summaries and why? Anyone who wants to read more Catholic books; but might lack the time to read all that is available consistently. Priests, religious, parents, teachers, students and anyone actively interested in learning more about the Catholic Faith make up CatechismClass.com's customer base. Our customers knows how important it is to stay informed and they read CatechismClass.com summaries to do just that in the most efficient, timesaving manner possible. How are the summaries delivered? Summaries are available for reading on line, or by download through our website. They are available in *. pdf format. Page 12 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Are opinions and commentary included in the summaries? Only the original author's opinion is included in each summary. CatechismClass.com does not offer judgment on the content in each book. Instead, the ideas, commentary, viewpoints and arguments are presented just as the author has intended in his or her book. How does CatechismClass.com choose which books to summarize? With so many books published each year, CatechismClass.com provides summaries for books that are deemed most important to Catholics. These books can be contemporary in nature or reflect something written in years past by prominent Catholic theologians, saints, doctors of the Church, etc. We also will summarize those books that are highly recommended by customers or trusted colleagues. Page 13 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Will I want to read the book after reading the summary? Often times, yes. Our customers use CatechismClass.com as a screening service for Catholic books that are worth buying. Links for purchasing are available within the summary. What if I have already read or fully intend on reading one of the books summarized? Our subscribers often like to keep summaries of books they have read or fully intend on reading as a way to refer to the main points of the book at a later time. How to Use the Adult/RCIA Program A special word should be said for those of you that seek to use our Adult Education materials whether in the context of an R.C.I.A course or for individual self-study. As part of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), adults are immersed into the faith over the course of an approximately 9-month long program that culminates with the reception of the Sacraments at the Easter Vigil. However, many parish programs are lacking in their depth of content because some individuals need a slower pace while others need a quicker pace. The result of many R.C.I.A classes is that the entire class is forced to complete the program at the pace of the slowest person, bringing the learning of the others down in the process. CatechismClass.com offers a unique program that provides adults with the necessary information to become a Catholic at a pace in which they can learn. The knowledge taught in these programs work well as a stand-alone program, as well as a textbook for direct usage by the parish. Take your first steps into learning about the Catholic faith right here with our Adult Package Program and you will receive all 6 series of lessons. We offer a series of lessons in 6 key areas: The Life of Jesus Christ, the Ten Commandments, the Sacraments, the Holy Mass, the Creed, and the Old Testament. Additionally, we offer a number of electives for the Adult Faith Formation Program. The course is meant to be used either in conjunction with a parish-based program, as the materials for the parish, or as a separate individual course of study. If you are seeking to use our items with a parish as part of an R.C.I.A program, you are responsible for contacting your parish or parishes in your area to ask them if they will accept the program. If they have any questions or doubts, please have them contact us. This course is offered for only $57.50 and contains dozens of lessons. The savings earned by purchasing the Adult Program rather than each individual lesson within amounts to a staggering $181.26! Page 14 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 To view this program, please click here. How to Purchase Lessons Now that you are familiar with navigating our products and the basic features of the CatechismClass.com website, you will need to begin purchasing lessons so that you can use them. It is important to realize that the Cart Process requires that you are both a registered user and logged in to complete a transaction. If you are not, you will be redirected to take care of that part first. The purchasing process requires you to add any items to the cart that you wish to purchase. By clicking on the Add to Cart button on any lesson, series, or package page, you can immediately add that item to your cart. Clicking on ‘Click to Continue’ takes you into the Cart. If the cart window times out too quickly, you can use the ‘Show/Hide’ link to expose the Cart again. Page 15 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 With each item that you add to the cart, suggestions of related or recommended items that go along with your selection will be shown on the screen. You can also add these immediately if you choose, or click the title links for further details as described above . Page 16 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 After doing so, your shopping cart will show the count of items in it. You can click the Show/Hide Cart link in the upper right corner of the header at any time to view the contents of your shopping cart. If at any time you feel that you have made a mistake, you can ‘Remove’ an item from the Cart before finalizing the purchase by clicking the ‘Remove’ link. Each step along the way, you will be asked to Click to continue. At any time, you may enter any discount codes that you may have been provided (such as the teacher’s manual discount), and then click on Click to continue. Eventually, you will see a Button that says: Checkout with PayPal. This will be the final step, and will take you directly to the PayPal site. Please note that you are still able to use the PayPal service, even if you do not possess a PayPal account; just input your own billing information, such as a debit or credit card. Of course, you can use your existing PayPal account if you prefer. Security: Please understand that you are using the secure system of PayPal to check out. Your billing information is not stored in CatechismClass.com and you can be certain that we do not have access to your personal finances. After you have entered all of your billing information, be sure to add your own email address for a confirmation receipt. Keep this confirmation for your records. If you choose not to have your email address on this form, please put [email protected] in this field. After completing the transaction, return to CatechismClass.com. Upon returning to CatechismClass.com, you should now have the lessons in your account automatically and be able to use them at a pace appropriate for you. If you need a pdf copy of the book summaries, they can be downloaded directly from the lesson. If you experience any billing or processing problems, or if not all of the items that you intended to order are in your account, please contact us either at our offices via telephone (423-2280405) or through our support ticketing system. Page 17 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 How to Add Students Now that you have your lessons, you may be ready to use them if you are the student. If you are not, you can now set up your students using the easy-to-use student creation system offered through CatechismClass.com You can now manage students in your household/catechist class/parish account by clicking on My Students on the Welcome Screen; and then you can create new students at the student management center by clicking Create a New Student from that page. These students will have their own usernames and passwords which you can manage, allowing your children to log in by themselves and take quizzes. They will have access to each course that you assign to them using the Assign Learning link. Note that you can assign each purchased course to only one student. For example, if you have both a 3rd grader and a 6th grader and have purchased both courses, you can assign each student his/her grade level’s course only. If you have two fifth grade students, you can only assign one copy of the 5th Grade program to one student. A second copy of the 5th grade courses needs to be purchased to be assigned to the other student. When creating a student, be sure to never create a student account with the same username as your own account. If you do, you will no longer be able to log into your own account. Also, each child should have their own unique username. Be sure to create usernames and passwords that you will remember, don’t depend on the children to remember. And be sure to add the ‘parent email address’ if you wish to receive an automated message each time they complete a lesson. Schools/Parishes: If you are a parish, catechist, director of religious education, etc., there is an additional feature in our system whereby you are given an upgraded status in our system with the ability to oversee all students within your program. The system will allow parents, as well as you or anyone else that you approve the ability to view the progress of students and their quiz scores. There are three levels of access on the website: students, normal users, and coordinators. The normal user is signed up with an email address and a password. This user is typically the parent but can also be the catechetical instructor. We would typically recommend for a parish to have the teacher for each grade be set up as the normal user. The user then adds their students under their account. We can manually add the names of the students for you, if you prefer. The coordinator has the ability to view multiple student accounts and examine the quiz scores of the students. Coordinators can also grant retakes to the students if they choose to grant them. To set up this feature, please contact us via the support ticketing system. Page 18 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 How to Use the Lessons Now that you have purchased the lessons and set up any students (if applicable) that need to be set up, you (or your students) are ready to begin using the lessons. Whether the user is a student or an adult, the process is virtually the same. You will see your lessons under My Lessons in the login area and/or the content area. Then you will see the uncompleted lessons. When you click on the Title link for a particular lesson, you will see your lesson appear. You can then make your way through each page and then at the end take the quiz. The lessons follow the typical seven-step format mentioned above and conclude with a quiz. How to Take Quizzes Each lesson concludes with a quiz in which you will have anywhere from 5 to 30 different questions to answer. Children’s lessons usually have around five questions while adults typically have 10 – 15, although some lessons will have more questions. Questions include both true/false questions as well as multiple choice. All of the answers to these questions can be found in the contents of the lesson or in the materials assigned for your reading if there is any links/articles that you were asked to read as part of the lesson. Be sure to read all materials and take the quiz only after you have had a chance to digest the information. Page 19 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 You will be given only one chance to take the quiz unless your system administrator grants a retake. Be sure to answer all questions in the quiz, or else the ‘Submit Button’ will not appear. After you have taken a quiz, you can click on My Quiz Scores on the Welcome Screen to see the list of quizzes that you have already taken. Click on the Title link of any lesson and you will see the number of questions that you answered correctly and your score out of 100%. The purpose of CatechismClass.com is to provide you with materials to help you and your family in their religious education and to provide parishes and other Catholic organizations the materials they need to teach the Faith. CatechismClass.com does not administer the Sacraments. While our program was written by several priests and has the support of Pope Benedict XVI and other bishops in the United States, we are merely a publishing company, seeking to spread the Faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. You are responsible for determining if your parish will accept the programs (if you intend to use the materials in order to receive the Sacraments) before you purchase the lessons. After you have taken all of the quizzes and you are taking part in this course - not as a self-study course but rather as a means to receive the Sacraments, you may be required to print all of your quiz results for your parish. We at CatechisClass.com are willing to write a letter of support to the parish that you have passed the program, only if you did not fail any quizzes and your Page 20 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 average score is at least a 70%. If you scored lower than a 70% or missed any questions that we deem “fundamentally important for a Catholic” then you will need to retake those tests before a passing certificate can be granted. Where do you access these quiz reports? These quiz reports on the ‘My Quiz Scores’ link will show each lesson for which you have taken a quiz. If you click on the Title of a particular lesson, you will see each question on the quiz, your answer, and the correct answer. A teacher/parent/ or coordinator will have access to all their students by clicking on the ‘My Students’ link on their Welcome Screen. There, you can select a particular students’ record by clicking on ‘See Results’ in the row containing their name. Having selected a student, you will see the screen below for that student. You can now have more information on each of their quizzes by simply clicking on the ‘See Details’ link for any individual lesson. That will bring up the same info as the student quiz result screen-- you will see the score for the quiz, each question on the quiz, the answer given, and the correct answer. There is also a link on this screen to “Assign a Retake” if that should become necessary. Offline Access For an additional charge of $18.99, you can receive any purchased programs as *.pdf files on a USB flash drive mailed to your address to allow you easy printing and offline access. As lessons are changed and new versions issued, those updates will be sent to you via email so that your files stay up to date. For this enhancement, please contact us via our support ticketing system. Page 21 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 Most Frequent Tech Support Questions and Answers I have “Reset My Password” several times but I still can’t Log In. Resetting a password is a two step process. First, you put your username in the ‘Username’ window and then click ‘Reset My Password’. The next screen will show you ‘where’ the Reset Request will be sent. If the email address in that screen is not your current address, you will not receive the second step to the process. Correcting this requires contacting us via our support ticketing system. After getting the Reset Request in your email, you must then click the link which will bring you back to the Password Reset info form. Here you can pick a new password. Remember that passwords are Case Sensitive. They must have at least one Capital character in them, and must be more than 6 characters long. If, after doing this you still can’t Log In, it may be because you have already reached the MAX-TRIES limit on your account (even before requesting the password reset) from the several incorrect Log In attempts; and the system has now locked the account for security reasons. A password reset request will not be processed on a locked account. Correcting this requires contacting us via our support ticketing system. I can’t find the Lessons that I’ve just purchased. When you first Log In, the screen may appear as if nothing has changed. In fact, you will only notice that the Log In header screen has now become a Welcome Screen header. On the Welcome Screen, at the lower left of the header, there is a link that says “My Lessons”. Click this link to find your Lessons. In the rare event that, indeed, there are no Lessons on that screen, please contact us via our support ticketing system and it will be investigated quickly. I can’t find the Submit Button on the Quiz. Look closely at the top of the quiz; it will state how many questions are to be expected. At the bottom of the quiz there will be a statement indicating how many out of the total number of questions you have answered. If you have answered less than the total number of questions on the quiz, the Submit Button will not be exposed. This has been designed to prevent accidently skipping a question. Page 22 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014 I registered my child, but I can’t get them on My Students list. Creating a student happens on the “My Students” link, under the Student Management Panel >> Create a Student. Unfortunately, sometimes users Register their children as normal users using the Register Tab. In this case, the child’s account is now a totally separate account from the parent’s account. Correcting this requires contacting us via our support ticketing system. I need to edit my User Profile. I want to change my Username. I want to change my email address. I want to change my first or last name. I want to change my zipcode. I wish to/no longer wish to receive the Newsletter. What do I do? On your Welcome Screen, there is a link that says “View/Change Profile Info”, click this. At the bottom of this screen, you will see the “Update Your Profile” button, click this. On the next screen, there are several textbox fields that you may edit including: username, firstname, lastname, zipcode, and email address. At the bottom, there is a pull down choice for the Newsletter, here you can edit the selection ‘Yes/No’ and then click the “Update My Information” button. I need a Certificate to get my Sacraments. On the last page of each lesson, prior to taking the Quiz, there are instructions about how you should obtain the Certificate for each Sacrament. Please follow these instructions closely. If anyone needs a certificate they should contact us via our support ticketing system. We will evaluate their progress and determine if/when they meet the eligibility requirements to earn a certificate. It is important to note that there is a necessary processing time involved, and therefore, you should not wait until the last minute to request the Certificate, especially if it is to be mailed. Page 23 CatechismClass.com New User Manual Last Updated: July 2014
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