Open with a welcome & orientation

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College of Business academics share their practice – © RMIT University

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Cultivating supportive online environments – Carleton University, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence

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A welcome and orientation begins the learner and facilitator journey. Think of it as an opening address that introduces, builds rapport, orients and provides an overview of the structure of the course. It is here where you should signal the key resources and activities with which learners will engage, and the suggested pathways to navigate the learning journey successfully. An orientation should also tell learners how to communicate with you and with others.

Strategies

Welcome and orientation announcements should be available before the first day of the teaching period. Note that announcements should be sent at least once per week during the teaching period to keep learners on task, engaged and motivated.

“The welcome video…puts a face to your name, to your course”

Dr Elsie Hooi, RMIT University

Welcome announcement

A typical welcome announcement looks like this:

• Briefly introduce yourself, your professional background, your interest and expertise in the course you will be facilitating.
• Outline how learners can contact you. Avoid emails for course-related questions as you want to build a community of learners. Instead, use frequently asked questions in the discussion forums or some other tool. Use emails for private conversations only.
• Provide a brief orientation to the course – a fuller, perhaps separate, orientation would include how to navigate the online environment and would draw attention to the course content, schedule, activities, assignments, discussion forum, grades and any other tools or activities such as web conferencing.
• Emphasise the importance of completing the readings and learning activities, and of participating in discussions, and how these build towards the assessments.
• Refer to the course guide about specific course requirements such as assessment due dates.
• Outline your expectations of learners – be clear and make sure learners are aware of the standards of behaviour (set them!) and communication rules. Outline what learners can expect of you. We’ll look at expectations in more detail a little later.

Orientation

A brief visual orientation to the learning space and technologies is a good idea. Using screencasts or desktop capture software provide useful demonstrations of the tools learners will use to engage with you, the course materials and with others. This overview does not have to be extensive:

• Start with an image of what learners first see when they log on – so they know they are in the right place.
• Draw attention to learning resources, schedule, activities, assignments, discussion forum, grades and any web conferencing links.
• Show the tools and functions that will be used and where they can get help if needed.
• Remind learners what they can expect of you in this space.

If you decide not to provide an orientation, make sure there are links to information sheets, training videos and any other support or orientation resources in your course.

“I make sure that a week before students have access, there’s a lengthy announcement from me explaining what I would like them to do. “

Dr Paul Gibson, RMIT University

Get started by creating your own orientation video message:

• Access a headset and webcam on a personal computer, tablet or mobile phone to create the message.
• Contact IT Service Desk to ensure any additional software is installed on your device or visit Service and Support (login required)
• Develop a script of key points that you need to mention.
• Develop any visuals you want to use.
• Record and post your message to the online learning space

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Example welcome and orientation announcement

Welcome to Statistics 1.

My name is Sam and I will be your facilitator during this teaching period. I am so pleased to welcome you as I hope this course will challenge and inspire you to think critically.  Statistics might not sound as interesting as some of the other courses you have studied in your program but I do things a little differently. Some might say really differently.

Understanding data, how data is analysed, presented and represented will give you a real edge in your future careers – It did for me. It’ll also help you make sense of the world around you. Have you ever thought that references to the “average income” of individuals in news bulletins seems a little high? Well I’ll help you to think about this critically – question the methods, question the representations and make real judgements about things.

I come from a background in social research. I also spent quite a long time working for start-ups and for various corporates. While I still do some of this, I spend quite a lot of my spare time teaching at RMIT. My expertise is mainly in research methods, analytics and  strategy consulting so I integrate my experience into this course quite a lot. You might get sick of my anecdotes but I think they are really useful to provide glimpses into worlds with which you might have not experienced. And I’m in 2 bands (but more about that later).

In the learning resources menu you will find weekly readings, videos and learning activities. It is really important you do these each week. I also expect all of you to participate in the weekly discussions, which I will facilitate. This is where the learning happens. And this is where I challenge your thinking and really build your skills. I’ll be around, in and out of conversations throughout each week.

You will also be invited into special web sessions (one per fortnight) where we will collaborate in real time on a problem.  The sessions will be recorded and made available on this site, too.

Remember to also read the course guide. The course guide has everything you need to know about how this course is structured, when assessments are due and a whole lot of information about online submission processes and student policies.  You’ll also find the study schedule in the main menu. This is super important as it will keep you on track.

I’ll be interacting with you using a number of tools – announcements, discussion posts and video.  Spend some time looking around this site to become familiar with all the buttons. You will find quite a lot of support resources, too. If you are having difficulties, raise it in the discussions forum.

But first – let’s get acquainted. I have created an introductions forum in the discussion area.

Sam

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View Dr Margaret Heffernan’s welcome video for her course Introduction to Management.

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Making videos with smart phones – A guide to producing short videos using your smart phone.

Using Echo for quick video messages – A guide to using Echo360 (an RMIT licensed application) to produce videos using your desktop or laptop.

Videolicious – Produce videos in three easy steps using this app, which is free for personal use.

Screencasts (desktop capture) – Record a screencast using various free apps.

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