Yes, do what you can to link faculty to ort processes.
Dr. B
Providing an opportunity for faculty to take a more active role.
I think that you are right. Students tend to move to instructors who they see are caring, but they also tend to gravitate to caring instructors that they see as SMEs (subject matter experts) who they see as relevant to their journey through school and beyond.
Excellent. Be sure to include career centered themes in your ort. Remember, most students want an education to get "the" job.
Dr. B
Our school does two orientation, first one a week before class starts. The Second one, the day before class start. This works for our school and students. The meet all there instructors and the rest of the staff.
Awesome. I believe informal mentoring centered on career themes will help your organization. Just a thought.
Dr. B
There is already a mentoring program in place where I work, and it is in place for new students. It is a formal program, and it seems to work. However, informal mentoring also has important place in school. Some people are better at mentoring than others, and some students and instructors seem to work well together. Some students find instructors to which they can relate.
There is a risk of too many rules and regs, too. Try to find a balance... and spend time letting them know they can do it. Many students think they can't.
Dr. B
One major change to the orientation program would be to more thoroughly introduce the new students to the rules and regulations of the school. This would save the instructors from having to be "the bad guys" when we try enforce the rules. Another beneficial change could be to introduce the new students to some of the instructors they are likely to have during their time in school. This way they might be less nervous as they progress from class to class.
I will work aggressively to keep students included in the class. I find that a class, that is ask question and are allowed time to answer. Are more involved. Correct tone and inflection also hold a class’s interest. I fill this is a positive way to maintain retention.
It sound like your school has a great plan for orientation.
Our school has an orientation program, but no mentoring program. I think adding a mentoring component to orientation and allowing the students more time to bond with one another is key.
I believe a more one on one mentoring program could be installed at initial orientation so a student could have someone to go to informally, if questions or problems arise during the entire school process.
Hi John,
I also participate in our schools orientation program but our class starts are spaced 6 weeks apart. They have a one day admissions orientations the day before and then the education dept. orientation is a day and a half to two full days. So we cover a lot of ground about the school what they can look forward to in the coming weeks and months. The metro area they have moved into to attend school a our campus. We have some motivational video's to show encouraging team work and follow this up with team homework answering a series of questions about school policies. During orientation student services also give presentations about course options and employment services available through the school.
Using a calendar to plan their days will be of great help to a lot of students. We teach this in our College Success course (about time management), so a course such as this expands on orientation and allows students to gain a more comprehensive understanding of what to do to make their lives a bit less stressful.
That is good,but I can't help but wonder about some individuals who might feel uncomfortable with that and maybe not express all of their feelings. Maybe breaking up into smaller groups with a rep. would be sure to get good input from all of the individuals,unless of course your orientation is generally a small number of people.
Good, John. Try to link ort materials to careers so that students can relate and keep their vision alive.
Dr. B
I do an orientation every 3 weeks and have for the last 3 years. I only have 2 hours to get a lot of infomation to the students but i do try and change it up. I try and make each orientation special.
Excellent. Sounds like you are focused on student success. Thanks for sharing.
Dr. B
I do an orientation for one of our special programs, it is for the students that have been in our school for a year and are now starting our program. In the pass we had about 60% pass rate just because the students were not ready for this type of program. After we started the orientations our pass rate in now 91%, a big improvement.
Just to let the students know what was to be expected of them and how much work it would be to complete the program but what the rewards were for those completing has been a big jump on retention numbers.
