School of Business & Entrepreneurship (NOW Online!!)

the lecture phase

The School of Business & Entrepreneurship (SOBE) teaches you to use business as a tool to see God's redemption and transformation in a culture, with a specific focus of impacting the least-reached peoples on the planet. Pioneered globally in YWAM at our campus in 2014, the SOBE is a ground-breaking secondary course that introduces fundamental core business topics such as Marketing, Relational Sales, Operations and Fulfillment, Product Development, Brand Management, Lean Startup, Business Law, Business Finance, Introduction to Business as Mission, The Biblical Purpose and Values of Business, Integrating the Business and the Mission and Apostolic Entrepreneurship. Our speakers include BAM practitioners from the field, as well as successful business people with missions experience from our local community. Running parallel to the teaching, students are writing a business plan, incorporating all that they have learned from each speaker. Our business experienced staff and our network of BAM mentors come alongside the students throughout the weeks to assist them.

Course content includes:

• Marketing
• Relational Sales
• Operations and Fulfillment
• Product Development
• Brand Management
• Lean Startup/Minimum Viable Product
• Business Finance and Accounting
• Navigating and Assessing Culture
• Introduction to Business as Mission
• The Biblical Purpose and Values of Business
• Integrating the Business and the Mission
• Apostolic Entrepreneurship
• Weekly BAM Case Studies

How does the online training work?

Three people from our experienced SOBE staff team, along with our course instructors, have been working for a full year to provide the highest quality online learning experience. The end result is over 500 pre-recorded videos produced in a short-video format. These videos, along with reading materials, activities and responses from the student, are organized into lessons of approximately 3-4 hours, with many stopping points along the way. This course structure allows the students to digest the material in shorter pieces and allows the school staff to monitor how well each student is digesting the material.

From Saturday - Thursday, students work through four of these lessons at their own pace and at a time that they learn best in their day. So the primary instruction is not a live class you watch online for three hours at a crazy time during the day or night! Throughout the week, students from all over the world, SOBE staff and SOBE instructors interact online through a discussion forum for that week. On Friday, we gather live online as a whole school for a Q&A time with that weeks instructor. Each student also has a weekly video one-on-one with a SOBE school staff person and then with a BAM coach that will be walking with them throughout the 12-weeks. The end result is an online YWAM school like you have never experienced before!

All of our online learning is done using Moodle as our Leaning Management System (LMS) and Panopto as our Video Content Management System (Video CMS). The student can start and stop whenever they want. Moodle will resume the lesson at the point they left off and is accessible through a web browser on any computer or a downloadable app on a mobile device.