Welcome to Summer: First Week Ideas

Greetings to Each of You,

As you create community this first week, here’s your chance to not only let people know that they belong, but also provide activities that help them know HOW to belong.

Various Strategies

Let your welcome email let people know what you find exciting about the course, and express your wish for their success. Outline practices that will help learners be successful, and name resources that can help them (Smarthinking, student helpdesk, rubrics, self-quizzes, interactivities).

Provide a phone number. Let people know when good times are to call and what info to leave w/ messages (name, course, phone number, reason, good days and times to return call).

Let students know they can request a phone conference from you via email.

Let them know best uses for external email.

Post a picture of yourself in the course. Invite people to provide pictures in the course room either of themselves or something they like to do.

Ask people to review the course competencies and ask how these line up or are different from their own goals

Have an icebreaker topic (like provide a link about your hometown, where would you like to be if you could be on vacation right now…)

You could create a brief “what to expect from this class” letter or sound file.

Write down your ideas (script)
Go to gapcast.com, create a free account.
Pick up the phone and call in your remarks.
Either download the mp3 or get the code right at gapcast to put a player on your home page.

Have the plagiarism discussion. We now have the links to the student handbooks at the home college. They'll soon be up at the Student Wiki, but your chair also has a copy.

Invite people to ask any questions about the course or tools—you can make this one anonymous.

Here’s wishing you a great term, and thank you for all you do for CCCOnline learners!

Best, Alice