Getting Started

Banner image of aircraft launching, thus beginning their journeys

 

In this Module, you should post crucial information and activities that can help students get acclimated to your course. Some elements you may want to include are:

  • Welcome message: opening statement to welcome students to the course
  • Prerequisite Knowledge: statement of expected baseline knowledge for students coming into the course
  • Faculty Introduction: A video introducing yourself to the class, telling them a little about you so that you can build a sense of a real person, more quickly gain trust and form a learning community in your course. To whatever extent you are comfortable, this should be just as much about you as a person as it is about you as a professor!
  • Student Introduction: Here you can place a discussion forum for students to introduce themselves like the one here: Student Introduction
  • Communication: Please indicate here whether you prefer email or phone, when it is best to reach you and how long a response may take. this is covered in the expectations as well but is it a quick access here for new students.
  • Office Hours and Location: Here you would place information about when/where you hold office hours. If your office hours are online, you should create a page with the information to access your chosen tool (e.g. Zoom, Skype) for those office hours.
  • Overview of the course: Along with a short description with purpose and goals for the course, this can be a screen recording of the navigation for the course to show students where things are, go over the schedule, etc. You should also indicate how the course will be conducted and this can be expanded in the Expectations section below.
  • Expectations: Many instructors find it helpful to include an Expectations document to help students understand what you expect of them, as well as what they can expect from you. You can also ask students to electronically "sign" this document as an introductory activity (click link for example).
  • Activities for Getting Started: Create a page with a checklist for things students are to do (complete) as part of getting started in this course along with the timeframe for completing them. It will also be helpful to note approximately how long each activity should take. An example page is provided here: