18.1 Onboarding First Years

We have always tried to engage and do ‘special’ things to onboard students for first year. 2020 created a challenge and a specific plan was developed. While done because of the pandemic and online situation, we think that many of the activities should be continued for when classes are on-campus. Thinking back over the years, many of the issues were not really that unique. Sadly.

The following has general points for onboarding first year students. Reflections on our own experience in 2020 can be found here.

Observations:

• Start early
• We started in May for the fall incoming and targeted the program’s foundation or concept course as the vehicle for focusing the onboarding activities.
• Connect early
• We opened the online learning platform at the end of June to the incoming and started a communication, connection program. There was an informal meet & greet as soon as we could, followed by a more formal welcome by the program, faculty.
• Connect (reasonably) often
• Create a communication and engagement plan (perhaps some online activities with current students, instructors, alumni) that will be paced during the months before the term starts. Create a q&a mechanism.

• Establish communication channels
• The students will get lots of communications from the university and faculty, but they also need to be connected to their program of study and it needs to become ‘personal’ for them. It is not enough to assume that the institution will communicate and email the students what they need to know.
• Demographics and intel
• Do a brief survey asap to understand the students coming in. Understand how they learned in high school, what their strengths and weaknesses are, their experiences, and use this to adapt your first-year student experience. Know the learning methods and technology used. The students change yearly and it is important to check your assumptions at the door. The actual brain has not changed much in the last 50,000 years, what happens in the first 17-18 years has.
• Empathy and caring
• The students need to know that you understand their situation, what their worries are, what their hopes are, and what they are dealing with. They need to know that you are aware and care. They need to know that you have their back.
• Remove some barriers
• We are not their parents, friends, buddies. But, we are human (we hope). Arrange half-hour to one hour coffee chats with small groups of the students so that you can share non-course time with them. Talk about why they chose their program, what their hopes are. Let them ask questions. This can be throughout the term. If you had any of these human moments with a professor when you were in first year, you will know how special they are. It is not about you (again the message, sorry). The chance to chat might not mean much to you, but it means a great deal to most 17-18 year olds!
• Transition support
• We had an online site ready with a number of notes for the students about transitioning to the university situation (see separate note on the site).
• Shock therapy
• The transition support site was integrated into the concept course with the material released early and a summary, reflective assignment worth 5% due in the first week. The goal was to get the student’s attention that things happen quickly at the university level, not like high school, that resources like the notes exist, and that the university experience will take some getting used to.
• Buddy up

• If possible, create a 1-1 coaching situation between incoming students and existing students. Make it mandatory (but allow the rare exception to opt out) as most students will not think they need help, but will in fact need lots of it. We worked with a professional coach to create training and help material for the student coaches and had a relatively small team of alumni volunteers work as ‘team leaders’ for the coaches. The professional coach was their backstop and the alumni were the backstops for the undergraduate coaches. The coaches were aware of the differences between counselling, coaching, and mentoring (there is a significant difference between the three). We have observed that many of the coaching relationships continue without any facilitation after the first term, that some coachee’s requested a new coach (5%), and that we had more student and alumni volunteer coaches than we needed. We had lots of spare capacity! We had an online communication platform (Slack) for the volunteers.
• Peer support
• We had student clubs, design (competition) teams, and even a student startup volunteer and help with onboarding and the transition; especially with things like resumes and interview prep.

Further reading

• https://mailchi.mp/uwaterloo/in-the-loop-ctes-monthly-newsletter-1375376#onboarding
• Roberson, M. (2018). Onboarding Freshman Business Students: Mindfulness, Learning, and a Business Plan for Life. Proceedings of the Appalachian Research in Business Symposium, East Tennessee State University, pp. 47-53.