By James M. Lang | August 24, 2021
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
I was 21 years old when I first stepped into a college classroom as an instructor. My master’s program had assigned me to teach a composition course and gave me a brief orientation to teaching the week before the semester began. I was so close in age to my students, so nervous about how they would perceive me, and so uncertain about what I was doing that I had precisely one goal for the first day of the semester: Get through it.
I managed to achieve that modest goal. But over the course of the next couple of decades of full-time teaching, I have become much more aware of the extent to which the first day of class sets the tone for everything that follows. In her book, The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom With the Science of Emotion, the psychologist Sarah Rose Cavanagh explores how humans quickly make initial judgments of people, on the basis of thin slices of evidence. “On the first few days of class,” she explains, “students will be forming their impressions of you, and this impression may be more important than much of what you do later.”
On that first day, I would argue, your students are forming a lasting impression not just of you as a teacher but of your course, too. Their early, thin-slice judgments are powerful enough to condition their attitudes toward the entire course, the effort they are willing to put into it, and the relationship they will have with you and their peers throughout the semester.
So that first class meeting is a big deal. You want to give students a taste of the engaging intellectual journey they will undertake in the coming weeks — and you have great flexibility in how you go about it. Helping you to make that opening session as effective as possible, whatever your discipline, is the goal of this online guide. What you can expect to find here:
Illustration by Eric Peterson
As you devise your plan of attack, these four principles can help you decide which activities and approaches will best draw your students into the course and prepare them to learn.
Too many college courses are presented to students as boxes of content: “British Literature From 1800 to the Present,” “Inorganic Chemistry,” “Principles of Sociology.” We walk into the room on the first day of the semester, open this box of knowledge and skills for the students, hand it over, and expect them to give it back three months later in the form of a final exam. The first class meeting usually affirms that approach. We tell students all about what we will cover throughout the semester, even though they might have no particular or prior interest in our subject matter.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
The first day is the best day to spark your students’ curiosity.
Instead, consider the first day as your best opportunity to spark students’ curiosity and invite them into a fascinating intellectual journey. In his book, What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain argues that instructors should build and present learning experiences around deep questions and problems. Highly effective college instructors recollect what first fascinated them about their discipline, pay attention to what fascinates students today, and make a connection with those issues at the opening of the semester. Such instructors reflect upon why the course should matter, and work to convey the significance of its content to students as well as to their world beyond the classroom.
All of which is why I can’t recommend strongly enough: Do not begin the first day of the semester by immediately handing out the syllabus. Instead, spark their curiosity about the content first, and then demonstrate — with a review of the syllabus — how the course content can help satisfy that curiosity. (I’ll offer some examples of how to do that in various types of courses below.)
We do not teach brains on sticks. We teach human beings who are inspired by wonder, driven toward community, beset by fears and anxieties, and influenced in countless other ways by aspects of their lives beyond the purely cognitive. For both you and your students, those emotions will be at a peak on the first day of the semester, and they can have a significant influence on what happens in your classroom.
You can support those emotions on the first day by fostering a sense of community in the room — even one filled with several hundred students. The intellectual journey you are taking together comes in the form of a caravan, and while you might be the leader, you want all of them to contribute to the learning experiences you will be creating for them. How do you convey that?
The more comfortable the students feel with you and with one another from the beginning, the more comfortable they will be participating throughout the semester.
You don’t have to wait until the second class meeting for students to start learning in your course. But that doesn’t mean you have to jump right into content delivery on the first day. Here are two ways to get them learning on the first day.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
Don’t mistake content delivery with teaching and learning. Find ways to engage students in activities that cause them to reflect and process.
Whichever approach you use, the most important element is basic: Set aside a chunk of class time on that first day for students to engage in cognitive work of some kind. Writing class? Have them write on the first day. A problem-solving course? Have them work on a problem. A discussion-based class? Get them talking. The point is that if you want your students actively engaged in learning throughout the semester, actively engage them in learning on the first day.
The previous three principles will guide you in devising creative, engaging activities for opening day. But you can’t ignore the fact that students will bring a host of expectations — things they will want to know right away — into the room with them. What shape will the course take? What materials will they have to buy? What tests, projects, and other assignments will they be required to complete? Are there any special obligations (such as field trips or community service) that might differentiate your course from a typical one?
An important practical reason for answering those questions on the first day is that not all students who show up will remain enrolled. Although you might be tempted to take it personally, my experience as an academic adviser suggests that students tend to switch in and out of courses during the first week because of logistical issues in their academic and personal lives. A student might discover on the first day that three of her courses require extensive amounts of writing, and decide to postpone one of them until next semester, so as not to be overwhelmed with deadlines. Or a student might switch into another section after he discovers that you have a required field trip that conflicts with a family wedding.
So allot at least some time of Day 1 to outlining the parameters of the course beyond subject matter: materials, assessments, policies, key dates and deadlines. You’ll have all of that information handily available to you in the form of your carefully constructed syllabus. I don’t recommend reading the entire syllabus aloud in the first class. Give students copies in print and online, and then highlight the major elements. Set aside time for questions. Some instructors give students a no-points or low-stakes syllabus quiz on or immediately after the first day of class, ensuring that they get familiar with the most important aspects of the course.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
To put the four core principles into practice requires a few practical considerations before the semester starts. Doing some advance work to familiarize yourself with the students, the space, and the technology available in the classroom will support the activities you have planned.
I often teach English composition, a class designed for first-year students at my college. Some years ago, I planned a first-day activity that asked students to think about what they had learned in their high-school writing classes. When I arrived in the classroom, however, I discovered — while looking over the roster for the first time — that more than half of the students were sophomore and juniors who had put off taking composition until now. My first-day planning fell apart, and I had to devise another strategy on the fly.
I learned from that experience the importance of taking a close look at the roster in advance of my planning, and uncovering whatever I could learn about the students before the semester began. At my college, the roster lists only the class year and contact details of each student. But even that basic information helps me understand the level at which I should pitch the opening of the course, and the kinds of first-day activities or examples that will resonate with the actual students in the room, instead of the ones I imagined would be there.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
Your institution’s learning-management system offers you opportunities to gather information about your students. You can send a message, or post an announcement, before the first class asking them to introduce themselves — via a discussion post, a short video they make with their phones or laptops, or an email sent directly to you with some basic information about themselves.
Being able to recognize and make connections with students on the first day will go a long way toward creating that strong sense of community in the course.
When I was a new teacher, still suffering from an excess of first-day jitters, a senior faculty member gave me some advice that had always worked to calm his own nerves. He would go to his new classroom a few days before each semester and get to know the space. He would make a full walking circuit of the room, getting himself comfortable with every corner, every angle, every perspective. That allowed him to teach more confidently on the first day.
I’ve been following that practice myself ever since — not only in my courses, but also when I have to give presentations at conferences or on other campuses. This ritual not only helps alleviate those first-day nerves but also informs me what kinds of adjustments I am going to have to make that semester for group work or other class activities. I see how much board space I have, whether the seats and chairs or table are fixed or have wheels, and whether I happen to be teaching in a space that has a thick column in the center of the room (as was the case on my campus until a few years ago until that classroom was, thankfully, closed).
Get a preview of the room before the semester begins. Stand at the front and say a few words. Write something on the board, then walk to the back of the room or sit in a seat. Envision yourself in the shoes of your students.
If you plan to use any technology in support of your teaching — either on the first day or during the semester — you will, of course, want to test it in advance. How many times have you sat groaning inwardly while a conference presenter stands at the front of the room flummoxed by some technological issue that should have been addressed before the start of the presentation? Spending the first class session exclaiming in frustration at a confusing control panel won’t set the stage for an effective semester.
Get into the classroom before the first day and test everything you might conceivably use throughout the semester. Plug in your laptop and make sure you know how to ensure it will appear on the classroom screen. If you’re going to show a video, check the volume. If you’re going to use polling or other activities that require students to use a connected device, ensure that the room has good wireless connectivity.
And remember that teaching technologies are not just digital — any tool that will support your teaching counts as technology. Make sure the board erases, the chairs can be moved, and that you have a space for your materials at the front of the room.
Do all of this well enough in advance so that you can contact your IT department or buildings-and-grounds office to resolve any problems before the semester starts.
Like it or not, students will notice what you are wearing and how you present yourself on the first day of class. If you wear casual clothes, encourage students to call you by your first name, and put the desks in a circle, you are forming a different impression than if you wear a three-piece suit, refer to yourself as “Doctor,” and stand at a podium. Neither of those impressions is necessarily right or wrong, but they do have implications for the level of authority you project in the classroom.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
Your appearance is your first impression; make sure it says what you intend for it to say.
Some faculty members wish to project a strong sense of authority, emphasizing their expertise and leadership. For them, more-formal attire and forms of address will support that perception. Others wish to present themselves as informal guides or companions on the course journey; casual dress and a relaxed manner can help convey that. New and younger instructors often feel compelled to emphasize their authority early in the semester, while this 49-year-old, in his 20th year of full-time teaching, feels pretty comfortable wearing jeans on the first day of the semester.
Of course, this question is an especially pressing one for female and nonwhite faculty members, whose authority tends to be subject to more criticism than that of white men. Across higher education, we should all be working to dismantle the prejudices that would lead students to question the authority of professors based on these aspects of our identities. But if you are concerned that some aspect of your identity might cause students to question your authority or take you less seriously as an expert in your field, you can find advice on how to proceed via the links in this paragraph.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
Don’t think you have to hit all four of the core principles in the first 50 or 75 minutes of the semester (although doing so is less difficult than you might imagine). Some well-designed activities can allow you to hit two or three at the same time. The following four models — for courses in English composition, history, psychology, and linear algebra — demonstrate how a set of well-designed first-day activities can put the principles into practice.
This model draws from my own experience in teaching a composition course that has a “community-engaged” focus — my students interact with a local nonprofit organization throughout the semester, producing written material for its website. Here’s how I spend the first day of class:
This model comes from an excellent blog post by Cate Denial, chair of the history department at Knox College, on how she conducts the first day of the semester in her lower-level history courses.
Sarah Rose Cavanagh, an associate professor of psychology at Assumption College and author of The Spark of Learning, uses a slide presentation to guide students through the first day of her upper-level “Brain and Behavior” course. Here’s how it works:
This model comes from a blog post by Derek Bruff, director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, who wrote a book on the use of personal-response systems (often called “clickers”) and peer instruction in the classroom. Since those tools form an essential part of his teaching, he gets students using them on the first day of his linear-algebra course.
One more issue to keep in mind as you plan for the first day: Context matters. What works for first-year students might not work as well for seniors. Obviously you can’t ask students new to college to reflect upon their previous college science courses. Likewise, students in a senior seminar might already know one another, so icebreaker activities will be superfluous for them.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
whatever you do on Day 1 will require some follow-up. Here are three pathways you can use to extend the reach of your first-day activities.
A quick and easy way is via your institution’s learning-management system. Record a brief, informal video to convey your impressions of what students produced or discussed in class. Show your enthusiasm for a great start, remind them about any conclusions drawn, and point them to aspects of the course that will connect to the first-day activities. If you don’t like making videos, do it in writing. You could supplement both approaches with links to relevant resources, articles, or videos.
In either case, finish your response, recorded or written, by pointing forward. How does what you accomplished on that first day set the stage for what will happen on the second day, the third, and beyond?
Or, you can do all of that in person on the second day of class. Produce a PowerPoint with the key findings from your first meeting, or a word cloud with their impressions of the course content. If the students created a list of activities that would help them succeed in the course, pull their ideas together into a one-page handout for successful learning.
As the semester continues, find small ways to link your opening-day activities to the current course content. In a senior seminar I teach on 21st-century British literature and culture, we watch a segment of the 2012 London Olympics on the first day, and analyze what it tells us about the British values that the organizers wanted to project to the world. As the semester continues, I refer back to those values whenever we can. Occasionally students, too, will refer back to that video in our class discussions, a connection I always affirm.
I always like to close the course by pointing students back to where we started — in part, because I like to show them how far they have traveled in their learning. In my survey course on British literature, on the first day we do a group brainstorming session in which I ask students to tell me what associations they have with the word “British.” Their impressions are always woefully limited — they always mention the royal family, for example, and never say a word about the enormous impact that immigration has had on Britain in the past half-century. On the final day of class, when I show them images of the board from the first day, they can see how deeply their knowledge of British history and literature has grown.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
From the start think about how to connect the first day to the last day, and vice-versa.
Your efforts to link back to Day 1 will have the greatest impact if you can show students visually what they did. So put that on your agenda, too, for the first class. Take pictures of the board that day. Make copies of worksheets or surveys they filled out. Keep discussion-board posts or videos preserved throughout the semester. Now pull those bits of evidence together into a quick presentation.
The four core principles that will guide you to an effective first day in a face-to-face classroom will do the same work for you in an online course.
In the opening module of an online course, you can still identify and emphasize a problem or question to spark the curiosity of students, and you can still begin a content module by asking students to engage in some task before they are ready. But in the online environment, you face larger challenges in terms of building community and outlining expectations for the course, especially if you are teaching students who aren’t accustomed to taking online courses.
Illustration by Eric Peterson
Online classes offer some of the same challenges and opportunities, but abstracted through the technology. Find ways to maintain the intimacy of an in-person class.
Quick videos and discussion boards offer you great opportunities to build community. Some options:
How to navigate an online course will not always be evident to your students, especially if they are adults returning to education after an absence or are students taking an online class as a supplement to their face-to-face courses. So it is especially important to provide another video or document that outlines how they can find the assistance they need, how to proceed through the course, and how to make sure their questions get answered. You can use an online annotation tool like hypothes.is, or an equivalent tool in the course-management system your college uses, to have students annotate the syllabus with questions and comments.
Online courses can easily become bloodless transactions of brains behind screens. In the opening of the course, establish your presence as a teacher who cares about their learning, and invite students to help you create a vibrant community of learners.
Whatever you do on the first day of class, get beyond the goal of just getting through it. A little time invested in first-day planning can have a lasting impact. Start the semester off by fostering students’ curiosity, supporting their learning, and giving them a preview of how they will be engaging with you and one another, and with the course content, throughout the semester.
James M. Lang is a professor of English and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University, in Worcester, Mass. His new book is Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It. He also is the author of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons From the Science of Learning. His Twitter handle is @LangOnCourse.