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  • Orientation

    By Dean Dad July 10, 2008 9:25 pm

    How do you make new-student orientation actually work?

    I've seen this tried in any number of ways, and it nearly always falls prey to some or the other of the following:

    • information overload at a moment when they aren't paying attention; nothing sticks.
    • no meaningful incentive for the students to show up, so they don't.
    • students drifting in and out, either physically or mentally (thanks to cell phones and the like)

    As with new employee orientations, it's hard to strike the balance between "what they really need to know right away" and "what they're capable of hearing at that moment."

    (A similar issue often arises with course syllabi. Students receive them, tuck them away unread, and then complain later that they were never told about the grading penalty for late assignments. In an annoying way, they have a point. They weren't told in a way that they could hear. In the real world, credit card companies rely on the same phenomenon: "sure, we disclosed our latest innovation in fiscal piracy, right there in four-point font on page 34, paragraph B, subsection iii of last month's bill insert! If you didn't read it, whose fault is that?")

    I've seen orientations structured around parades of speakers, which strikes me as hideously inefficient. Each new speaker requires an introduction and thank-yous, and usually a non-trivial amount of scene setting. Three minutes of arguably relevant information shouldn't take fifteen minutes to deliver, but internally there's often a push for 'representation' of the different areas, as if students care.

    Oddly enough, for all the attention paid to the diversity of incoming students, student orientations are one-size-fits-all. They're based, consciously or unconsciously, on an idea of what a typical student would need to know. But the whole idea of the Typical Student is much harder to sustain than it once was, and in most other contexts, we know that.

    Personal concierge service isn't really an option, given the numbers of students we're talking about, and a purely online program strikes me as just as likely to fail as anything else. (If that worked, we could just hand them the catalog and the student handbook and send them on their merry way.)

    Peer-directed orientations have their appeal, but in a community college setting the 'seniors' are sophomores. Even the savviest students will have had only limited views of the place.

    So, a question for my wise and worldly readers (who've been on a roll lately): have you seen a way to make new-student orientation actually work?

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Comments on Orientation

  • scavenger hunt
  • Posted by Lou on July 11, 2008 at 8:05am EDT

  • I enjoyed working at a two year technical college in southwest Georgia that provides student orientation in the form of a scavenger hunt. Students were given a attractive playing card and employees of the college assisted in locating office/facilities where the prizes were located. Once in the various locales students got a 'prize' and a bit of information. This included student affairs (parking permits and student handbook review), financial aid (pencil with a reminder to renew financial every year after tax season), library (student id and review of how to log on to student email and access to the student database for registration/academic history), and finally the students would go to a classroom that represented their program area where they would be greeted by their program faculty and receive programmatic orientation as well.

    The college conducted a study that at least indicated that students knew where pertinent departments were located, understood some of the most important regulations, knew their student email address, met their program faculty, met some follow program students - and they had a little fun along the way. And yes, rules, regs, and the student code of conducted were addressed during the event.

  • Traditional orientation vs First Year Experience
  • Posted by Dr. F. Gump on July 12, 2008 at 8:55pm EDT

  • I've yet to see a well-researched, in-depth article on your question, but you might subscribe to First Year Experience publications (U. of South Carolina).

    Traditional summer orientations (overnight= 16 hours) or 6 - 8 one-hour labs added on to typical first-year student courses; quite a span of investment.

    In between those two extremes, many colleges (both two and four year institutions) have opted for a one credit hour orientation class or student success class.

    Spread out over 8 to 16 weeks, a college orientation class doesn't overload the new student so much as the traditional summer orientation.

    It also provides information in a more timely manner, that, while students are starting to really need to know where the library research orientation person is located, where the counseling center is located and what are the hours of operation, or who the college ombudsperson is and what that person does.

    The F.Y.E. option is the deluxe version, maybe a little over-kill, but everything plus whipped cream and a cherry on top. A full two semesters of support, 6 - 8 instructors who are committed (and paid) to be instructor/advisors/mentors.

    Some colleges opt for something called "coaching" - usually weekly phone calls from an out-sourced agency of rah-rah advisor/coach/mentors (and usually a lot more expensive than what your college can provide with peer mentors and your own faculty).

  • Student Orientations
  • Posted by Mervyn Extavour , Coordinator at CIPRIANI COLLEGE OF LABOUR & COOPERATIVE STUDIES on July 17, 2008 at 4:15pm EDT

  • Interestingly, at Cipriani College we have been able to 'craft' out a kind of orientation session that has really caught the attention of the incoming and continuing students. We feature an afternoon of 'total fun' where students are exposed to both an exciting display of enjoyable 'cultural products' and a few 'speeches' well timed and chosen to suit the kind of audience we attract. We have an extremely wide range of students - from the high school graduate to the working adult nearing retirement. We also provide some refreshments and a variety of entertainment packages to motivate them into their new academic challenges.

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