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