Three ways to make the most of the first day of class, even when it happens remotely!

Research suggests the first day of class can be a critical moment to engage and motivate students by facilitating activities designed to accomplish more than a review of the syllabus or basic course introductions. It could be argued that these first-day strategies are even more critical in the remote environment. On your next first day of class, consider using these strategies to take advantage of first-day energy in order to get your remotely taught course off to a great start!

Break the ice

A sense of community is vital to the success of the online classroom. Setting the stage at the beginning of the term is a great way to help establish this sense of community. Icebreaker activities on the first day are a great way to get to know students and provide an opportunity for them to get to know each other. Inviting students to introduce themselves in a Blackboard Discussion post is a great start, but also facilitating an icebreaker during your first synchronous class gives students a low-stakes opportunity to get comfortable speaking on camera and helps to provide scaffolding for later discussions where they may be asked to take greater intellectual or creative risks. 

Communicate the value of your course

In How Learning Works (2013), the authors explain that one of the factors contributing to student motivation is holding a high value for the task at hand. Generating value for a course can be fairly easy or extraordinarily challenging depending on several variables including the course content, and whether the course is a requirement or major capstone. Regardless, the first day of class is a perfect time to begin intentionally aligning your course with students’ personal, professional, and academic goals. To do this, implement an activity that you plan to use throughout the course such as a small group discussion about course expectations or an individual reflective writing activity about students’ hopes for the class--you might even add a few poll questions to help students understand how the course will be taught. Not only will these activities help students focus on the value of the course, they begin to prepare students for what is to come. In addition, explicitly outlining the relevance of course activities and assignments also helps students answer that ever-present question: why are we doing this?

Give students a little autonomy

Lastly, consider empowering your students by allowing them some say in the decision-making within the course. For example, you might use the first day of class to collaboratively co-author portions of the syllabus such as fine-tuning a list of readings or developing classroom etiquette, guidelines, or expectations for participating in future classes. This could also be as simple as giving students a choice in which assignments they complete, when they are due, or how those assignments are weighted.