Getting Your Students Started with Your Course

For a student, whether in an in-person or online class, the beginning of a new semester can be both exciting to start fresh and frightening to not know what you’re getting yourself into. In an online class, both novice and experienced online students can be confused, frustrated, and panicked going into a course site with no directions or explanations. Even if they have taken an online course before, it’s likely their previous instructor organized their course differently and you don’t know what the student’s experience of that course was. This makes it critically important to provide sufficient instructions and useful information and begin to shape students’ expectations of the course by modeling appropriate behavior.

When students login to your course for the first time they need to see something that orients them to where they are and explicitly communicates what they are to do in a friendly and welcoming manner. It’s your first instructor presence impression!

Your Course Home Page

Even though Canvas gives you several options for the course home page, it is always recommended to set your course home page to a page that you have created, at least for the first couple of weeks. Starting new students on a syllabus page or a modules list isn’t nearly as welcoming as a page you’ve created introducing the course and letting them know what they need to do to get started. The homepage is where students begin when they enter the course each time, therefore, it’s the most visible part of your Canvas site. Take advantage of this space to ensure that your students see you as a real person who enjoys teaching the course and is happy to work with them.

To improve the odds that your students get started with the course as smoothly as possible, there are a few things that need to be on the homepage.

• Information about anything they need to do before the course begins such as get a book you’ll be using the first week, make sure they have a microphone, a webcam, a particular app or software package, or other supplies.
• Information about what to do to get started with the course. Always presume that at least some of your students have never taken an online course or been in a course that uses Modules. While some students may click around and find things, many won’t. Providing explicit instructions makes it easier for everyone.
• Information about you. Who you are, how you prefer them to contact you, and a welcome video with you on camera.

Other information that you want students to know from the beginning such as using Turnitin for assignments or Examity for testing, information about a course-long project or service-learning component, or information on any live video or in-person meetings you may have can be on the homepage or included in a welcome video.

Keep in mind that you can (and probably should) change your home page content after the first couple of weeks of the semester. It’s a good place to put updates or module recap videos or you can set it to be the Modules tool.

Course Welcome Video

With the technological advances making it much easier to record and post video, a course welcome video provides that initial connection with you where students can see you as a human being. It allows them to see that there is a real instructor in the course and that is someone they can feel comfortable approaching with questions.

Making your own video can be intimidating. The two main reasons faculty share for avoiding video are technology and personal appearance. There are detailed instructions to record video using Kaltura Express Capture, Zoom, Kaltura Personal Capture, and PowerPoint 365 in the Canvas Semester Checklist Pressbook. If you shy away from video because you dislike the way you look or sound when recorded, know that it’s natural to feel self-conscious. Start with something short. Have a script. Keep in mind the recommendations in the Dos and Don’ts section in Making Your Own Videos:
wear solid colors
have a relatively neutral background
try to be lit from the front rather than from the back or overhead
use a microphone that provides clear audio without buzzing, clicking, or static
Even if you don’t normally wear makeup, some carefully applied concealer and powder can make a big difference if you dislike your skin tone on video.

It may be painful the first few times but the more you record, the easier it gets. 

Other Welcoming Actions

Even in large classes having a personal introductions forum is recommended. When your enrollments top 50 or 60 you may want to break them down into smaller groups. It is better for students to get to know at least some others in the class rather than not have introductions at all because the course is too large to introduce themselves to everyone. Whether you choose to do video, text, or let the students choose, letting students “like” each other’s introduction posts is a good way to let students show support of one another without scrolling through dozens “that’s great” or “I like that too” posts.

Students are not inherently interested in introducing themselves or reading/watching the introductions of their peers. striking a balance between getting information that is useful to you and starting to build community is important. Thinking about information that you would find useful: Would it be helpful to know who are majors in your department and who are taking the course as an elective? to know what interested them in the class (especially if it an elective)? to know what they hope to learn?

The standard “something interesting or unusual about yourself” question, may look frivolous, but it’s a good way for students to connect to each other. Other options for online icebreakers include

• posting a meme that they feel represents themselves or portrays something they would want other potential teammates to know about them if you’re having them form their own groups or pairs,
• sharing a picture of a favorite thing or place and a sentence about it,
• sharing two truths and a lie and then having other students guess the lie,
• asking any sort of preference question that could generate groups for later activities such as
  • what type of candy would you be and why (sort into chocolate, fruit-flavored, hard candies, etc.)
  • what superhero power would you have and why (sort into motion powers (speed, flight, etc), control powers (fire, weather, telekinesis, etc.), mutation powers (grow, shrink, stretch, invisibility, etc.), etc.)
  • favorite food with a link to a recipe or restaurant and why they like it

Finding something in common is easier done in casual hallway conversation before class or on break. Providing a place for that social presence to begin online is helpful. Do be careful when asking introduction questions to make sure you are not asking things that students may be uncomfortable saying in public (like age) or that are irrelevant in a course where students are geographically dispersed (like where they went to high school).

If you are using video conferencing at any point in the class it’s a good idea to include an optional synchronous video orientation in the first two weeks. It gives students a chance to test out their video equipment and gives you an opportunity to address any questions or concerns they might have.