Designing & Teaching An Online First-Year Experience Course

Description  Challenge - Designing an effective online first-year experience course Often the first-year student in our class finds unsuccess that first semester, and we are surprised. Sometimes there were no signs of concern. Yet, the student has failed all or many other classes. It is hard enough to know if a student is on-path in an in-person class, so how do we detect challenges for the individual outside our class's scope when teaching online? We will discuss how the instructor's role as a "case manager" can be facilitated outside of a classroom and how a student instructor's role supports that. Key Takeaway Instructors of a first-time experience course have jumped into the pool of online teaching for the cohort facing what is often a make-it or break-it semester. Now it is time to swim deeper and more intentionally design and deploy our online first-year courses because what we did before may have been good at the time but may not be good enough going forward. Overview This webinar's purpose is to do more than list the why and how. It is meant to show what this course might look like in Zoom and learning management systems and in applications on their phones. The suggested pieces of this online first-year experience course can be adjusted for both livestream and online course modules with no livestream. The idea is to see enough innovation and creativity to be inspired to create the online course that best meets your needs. We will explore how the first-year experience course content might be best presented in an online environment and how online tools provide an exciting way to create more dynamic, engaging instruction. Online environments offer the opportunity to best support an approach to content called interleave—a highly vetted, researched method of developing recall skills in students. This might be a new pedagogy for some who have used a blocked approach. We will explore how the sequence for the first-year experience course might be less of a factor by using multiple online platforms that offer the opportunity to address many elements of the course simultaneously. The usual time invested in determining "What first?" and then "What next" will be minimized. For first-time students, all of the content is a priority. Online learning helps us to cover more upfront and then have the time to recover those topics throughout the semester. We will explore how the online assignments can encourage interaction with the campus culture and the instructor. In particular, the feedback of the instructor might be quicker and more personal when conducted online. We will also discuss an overarching method to teaching an online first-year experience course. This cannot be just an online study skills course or just an online introduction to your campus's traditions and culture. This course must connect the instructor to the student. To that end, we talk about guarding against "over-preparing" and "over-developing the course." Objectives Create a more fluid approach to online content Build a less-sequenced approach into the online syllabus Emphasize the importance of online feedback to individual students Launch an out-of-class case management approach that relies heavily on a student instructor De-structure the online structure and make room for flexibility, observation, engagement Who Should Attend Administration investigating beginning or improving a freshman success program Instructors and student instructors working with freshman success programs Any educator interested in learning more about designing and teaching a first-year experience program