Starting Strong

The first day of class is the time to introduce the course, gain the students' interest, and start the semester off right. Whatever you plan to do during the semester, do during the first day. This will set the tone of the course and begin to create an effective learning environment.

• Prepare a syllabus that students want to read. The syllabus is likely to be the first interaction your students have with you, so design it with them in mind.
• Canvas allows you to develop an online social presence for your course, and connects you, your content, and your students.
• Get the lay of the land (literally): check out your classroom a few days before your class is scheduled to begin.
• Send a welcome e-mail. Connecting with students before the class meets builds rapport between you and the students, and can help set expectations.
• Learn More about Canvas.

The first day is an opportunity to make an initial impression with the students about the people in your class and the content of the course. Seize the opportunity to engage your students in an activity and debunk the myth that it is only about the syllabus.

• Set expectations for participation.
• Warm-up with an icebreaker activity.
• Share a personal story about an impactful learning experience you had that influenced you as a student or your favorite park or trail in Austin.
• Find the balance: overwhelming students with too much information, or providing too little and ending class early, is counterproductive (Perlman and McCann, 1999).
• Learn more about icebreakers.

Engage students in "myth-busting" by presenting students with a series of statements about your course content. Then, have students work in groups or use clickers to determine whether the statements presented are facts or myths. This is a great opportunity both to demonstrate clicker use and point out some common misconceptions about the course content.

• Use a concept test to learn more about essential content that you expect your students to know upon entering your course.
• Have students work in pairs or groups to generate a list of problems they expect the course to address (McKeachie, 2002).

Research shows when teachers self-disclose, and those disclosures are viewed by students as being relevant, students are more likely to actively participate in class and to ask questions that directly relate to the course (Cayanus, Martin, & Goodboy, 2009).

• Arrive early to class, if possible.
• Survey your students to learn more about them.
• For smaller classes, learn everyone's name. For large enrollment classes, spend some time before class starts talking with students in different areas of the room.
• If you teach a large enrollment course, then make the class feel smaller by having students engage with those around them.

Informal feedback from students can offer insight into how you can adjust teaching and learning strategies during the semester.

• One common method for gathering informal feedback is known as "stop, start, and continue," where students write down 1-2 things they would like you to stop doing, start doing, and continue to do.
• Make sure you communicate with your students about the results (any major themes you want to highlight in the feedback, things you might change, etc) the next class period.

While ongoing management of a teaching portfolio is useful for discussions with your chair or supervisor, the informality of a journal is helpful in remembering which things worked in the class and which things didn't work, and what you may want to try next time (Svinicki and McKeachie, 2014, p. 18).

• Start a portfolio or teaching journal.
• Conduct mid-semester course feedback.
• Ask a colleague to observe your class.

The University of Texas at Austin provides many resources to support teaching and learning.

• Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD)
• Sanger Learning Center
• Information Technology Services (ITS)
• University of Texas Libraries - Teaching & Learning Services
• Student Conduct and Academic Integrity
• Vick Center for Strategic Advising and Career Counseling

The impressions that both teacher and student make on the first day help set the tone for the rest of the semester (Schramm, 2010). Favorable first impressions are highly correlated with positive end of semester course evaluations (Laws, Apperson, Buchert, and Bregman, 2009).

Establishing and communicating clear expectations for student behavior early in the semester can help prevent or lessen conflict later on. Going over course expectations on the first day is viewed as a necessity by students (Iannarelli, Bardsley, Foote, 2010).

Research suggests "the social and emotional gains that students make during college are considerably greater than the intellectual gains over the same span of time" (Ambrose et al., 2010; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991).