Thoughts on an Effective Online Orientation

This week’s blog will feature an article I came across that highlights the importance of Online Orientation from someone else’s perspective. The article was written by Christopher Hill, a distance learning specialist and is titled “Six Steps to Creating an Effective Online Orientation Program.” He investigates the distance learning team at Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio.

Now it is important to point out that even though this article focuses on online orientation, it is a bit different than what we here at Comevo offer. Our orientation goes one step further – we save your staff even more time because with our @school Online Orientation your staff does not need to be present to administer the orientation. However, I thought the information was valuable and hope you enjoy the article as much as I did!

“If you’ve never taken a web-based course you don’t know what you do in the online classroom, you don’t know how to use the tools in the online classroom; you don’t know how to do the equivalent of how to raise your hand.” So says Danielle Karpus, Distance Learning Support Specialist at Cuyahoga Community College.

Cuyahoga is Ohio’s oldest and largest multi-campus community college with about 10,000 online students, many of whom were entering these classes with no idea of what to expect.
To address this problem, Karpus and the distance learning team at Cuyahoga created an online orientation online orientation program for students.

1. Move from in-person to online orientation- Cuyahoga started by doing in-person orientation sessions in the classroom, but met with student complaints. “We had students saying ‘I signed up to take a web-based course, I don’t want to be coming to campus,’ Karpus says. “That’s when we started playing around with virtual orientation tools.”

2. Logistics- Karpus conducts the virtual orientation live, in her office with a webcam and headset. She records each session, so that it can be offered to students any time they log in. There is a link to register for in person sessions, but there is always a link to a recorded virtual session.

3. Convenient scheduling- Not only did the students want virtual orientations, they want them at times that were convenient for them. They don’t want them from 8:30 to 5 when they’re working, so Cuyahoga has taken to scheduling orientations in the evening and even on the weekend.

4. Hands-on training- Students are surveyed after every orientation. Part of the feedback Karpus and her team got from the students was that it was helpful to watch the instructor showing them how to use Blackboard, but they wanted to try it themselves. So the distance learning group created a sample site called “Blackboard for You” to give students some hands-on experience.

5. Keep students engaged- When Karpus runs a session she starts with a pre-formulated curriculum that’s about 40 minutes long. Then she opens it up to the students to allow some interactivity—she solicits feedback on any questions they may have, and what they didn’t understand.

“It’s important during a virtual orientation to have a way to see if they’re paying attention,” Karpus says. If she has a small group she can give them power to use the whiteboard. She’s also experimenting with a phone bridge, to allow students to call in during a session rather than just using text-based chat.

6. Show an impact on retention- Every public college and university is feeling the pressure to show increased student retention, student success and performance. Karpus is in the middle of a research project to determine if orientation makes a difference in a academic performance and online orientation rates. She’s at the data-gathering stage, and she will be doing focus groups with students who go through orientation.

Excerpted from 10 Tips for Running an Effective Online LMS Orientation, Distance Education Report, May 15, 2008.

Happy Training,

Carrie PeckComevo LLC