An Orientation Module
An Orientation Module
There are so many resources and services that we want our students to know about so that they can be successful throughout the semester, right? What's the best way to share all of these with our students without information overload? An Orientation Module! An orientation module gets everyone on the same page with regards to all the support that is available to your students.
What Goes Into It?
You can include anything that will help your students be successful: A course tour video, tips for success from previous students, links to Mesa Student Services, Canvas Support, and so much more. You can include activities for them to complete such as a practice quiz, an icebreaker discussion, a getting-to-know-you-survey. Whatever you decide students need to practice and know about prior to getting into the course content itself. Plus it gets them used to navigating through the Canvas modules tool itself.
A Template for You to Import
You don't have to start from scratch on your orientation module. Go out to the Canvas Commons, and search "Katie Palacios," and you'll find a template available for import. It is incomplete! So you'll need to edit the pages to make it work for you, and of course you can unpublish/remove pages that you don't want to use, but it is a great place to start.
What's in the Template?
As you'll see in the video above, our orientation module template includes the following:
- Orientation Overview
- Instructor Intro
- Let's Stay Connected
- New to Online Learning?
- Course Tour
- Mesa Student Services
- Mesa Library Resources
- Technical Support
- Icebreaker Discussion
- Syllabus Quiz
- Student Survey
- Orientation Summary
Feel free to customize the template as much as you like. There are placeholders on those pages where you'll need to add your own videos/links, etc.