How To Design & Teach An Online First Year Experience Course

Description  ChallengeDo you think of yourself as a life coach? This webinar will recommend that a first-year experience course operates with a case management approach—one where the instructor will identify and address those obstacles for the individual student’s success. In the first semester, the choices students make set trajectories into motion that plot the course for their entire university experience. The stakes are high that our first-time experience course is meaningful. Zoom online meetings make getting to know a student much harder than when a student casually or unexpectedly engages in chit chat after class or in the instructor’s office. We will talk about how to counter that. Key TakeawayThe landscape of higher education has been volatile and unpredictable of late. It has forced instructors to flex their teaching approach even as we build our new online teaching experiences like one who is building an airplane in the air. This webinar is the why and how to teach a first-year experience course online. It will also remind instructors that this en masse shift to online teaching is an exciting opportunity to introduce new students to just how engaging online learning can be. OverviewOur role as learning instructors of a first-year experience course is to motivate students to thrive in a remote learning modality as so much of their college experience may be exactly that going forward, but what if the instructor needs a lot of that same motivation? When first stepping into a Zoom class, many instructors may have asked: Where did my class go? You may have had a well-entrenched routine, flow, and mode for years with a face to face first-year experience course. One could pivot by just uploading curriculum materials in a learning management system or become a talking head for the Zoom camera, but the situation demands more of an instructor. The situation requires that we take the time to understand just how much our students have changed in this last year. We must understand the new baseline from which we will attempt to motivate them to start strong and maintain their momentum for the long-stretch. The pandemic may have left our new students feeling disconnected and disenfranchised, so this cannot be just another study skills course. We have to be creative difference-makers now to escalate this course for their needs. We are teaching for “making the most of one’s college experience” while creating an experience that demonstrates that being in college is valuable. And we need to do that online; this can be daunting. This webinar is about challenging yourself to do more with the first-year experience course. Get it online. It is the new norm. Get it in the air and start building your airplane. Objectives Design instruction for an online first-year experience course. Transform a blocked approach to an online interleave approach. Reframe the “modules” of this course as valuable lessons that are tied to popular messages online. Deploy a case-management approach that identifies student obstacles using online platforms. Create online assignments that prompt peer collaboration, self-assessment, and self-regulation. Build a comfort zone in what can be an uncomfortable situation online. Who Should Attend Administration Enrollment Management Faculty Student Services/Affairs Any educator interested in learning more about peer mentor programs