Become a Sponsor Couple

So you’ve been asked to accompany an engaged couple through the SmartLoving course. Thank you for your generosity – you will make all the difference their experience. You also will get a great deal out of it yourselves and you can check out some of the testimonials from Sponsor couples on the SL website.

You’ve probably got quite a few questions so let me explain how it works. Click any tab below.

From the Sponsor course information page select ‘enrol now’. This will add the course to your cart. You only need one account per couple.

If you already have an account with SmartLoving, you can login and then go through the checkout. This will unlock your access to the Sponsor course.

Your engaged couple may have already purchased workbooks for you, but if they haven’t, you may wish to purchase print copies of the workbooks. Add them to your cart and go through the checkout as normal.

ENROL IN SPONSOR COURSE

Tip: If you get stuck we have created video instructions on how to enrol here.

Once you go through the checkout, you will have an account on our platform. You’ll already be logged in at this point, so just select “Dashboard” on the menu. From here, you can see all your courses.

If you want to access the platform in the future, there is a ‘login’ button at the top right of the SL site.

LOGIN

SL Engaged was first developed as a face-to-face course designed to be delivered by a trained mentor couple to one engaged couple at a time. The curriculum can also be adapted for use with groups and many dioceses and parishes around the world have done this. Run over 6 sessions of 2-2.5 hours each, this course includes approx. 20 mins of DVD content in each session. Mentors are trained to present additional content not covered on the DVDs.

In 2016 we adapted the curriculum for a fully online delivery. We redistributed the content over nine lessons of approx. 1.5 hours each and incorporated the unit on fertility management (run as a take home activity in the face-to-face version). We used the same content and videos, and made additional videos and audio explanations to cover the material in the course that is usually presented by the mentor.

The addition of these video and audio files means that Sponsors do not need to be trained in order to sponsor an engaged couple as the online course is completely self-contained. Navigating the course is fairly intuitive and thousands of students have successfully completed the course.

We call these married couples in the online course ‘Sponsors’ to differentiate them from the trained ‘SL Mentors’ who run the face-to-face course.

From your ‘dashboard’ click 'Go' on the Sponsor course to see an overview of the lessons.

• Lesson 0 has introductory notes and a registration form. Please complete this so that we can keep in touch with updates to the course.
• Lessons 1-9 are the course itself and this is exactly the same as the Engaged version of the course with some important differences:
  • The engaged version has a progression lock so that couples are required to do the course in order,
  • Time locks so that they are required to spend a minimum of 1 hour active in the platform before the lesson quiz activates.
  • An 80% pass in the quiz is required to unlock the next lesson.
  • And at the end of the course (Lesson 10) the couple has an online assessment which they both complete. This generates a PDF of their completion certificate and a report with their answers for their celebrant.
• The Sponsor course has no progression lock, no time locks, and no final assessment. We left the quizzes in place so that you could have some fun with them, but you don’t need to get an 80% pass to move on (phew!).
• In addition, we've also added tips and tricks to support you as you progress. These include a summary of each lesson, the key learning objectives, as well as issues that sometimes come up in this topic and how to handle them.

You and your engaged couple simply do the course in parallel in your own time and in your own homes, meeting up to discuss what you have learned using the discussion guides provided for each lesson.

We recommend you pace the course at one lesson per week (or two weeks) so that the course can be completed within 2-6 months allowing for a few skipped weeks with illness or travel.

As the course has practice tools to do between lessons, it is not practical for couples to do more than one a week without compromising the learning experience. Where necessity requires a compressed time frame, we rely on local Sponsors to make a sensible judgement about how to best support the engaged so that they can approach their marriage vows properly formed.

What’s the difference? 

The two courses are identical in content and structure. The Sponsor course however has no time locks or progression locks and no assessment at the end of the course. Nor do Sponsors need to gain 80% to pass the lesson quizzes – phew! 

As there is NO completion certificate for the Sponsor course, it is not suitable for engaged couples and may not be used as a substitute for the Engaged course.

In addition, the Sponsor course includes exclusive insider tips to support you in your role.