Three tips for welcoming your students in your Absalon course room

TIP #1: Welcoming page with course information

To provide students with a comprehensive course experience, consider structuring your Absalon course room to cater to their needs. Include a welcoming page that equips students with essential information for successful navigation. This might encompass the course schedule, contact information, insights into the course structure, expectations regarding both work methods and communication, and guidance on where to access resources, materials, and details about timing and location.

Depending on the structure of your course, e.g., if it comprises several distinct modules, you could also consider such introduction pages to each module. These could contain a guiding text explaining what the module entails, background information and/or pictures of the lecturers, a quiz as preparation for the synchronous teaching activity and references to where students can access more information to enhance their academic experience.

TIP #2: Didactic contract and commitment to learning community

To establish a strong commitment to a learning community between you and your students, in your welcome, you can define and explain your expectations towards the students in the course. We often refer to this alignment of expectations as a didactic contract. This could be in the form of text on the welcome page or a welcome video where you explain the expectations, e.g. towards preparation, active participation in synchronous or use of asynchronous learning activities.
Especially when meeting the students over a longer period, a number of SUND’s teachers have good experiences with reaching out to student representatives and aligning expectations with them in a short online meeting prior to the course start.

TIP #3: Safe learning environment

In order to foster a conducive environment for learning and students’ well-being, it is crucial to create a space where students feel safe to ask questions and learn from their mistakes. In this student-centric approach, you could consider recording a brief and straightforward welcome video, which you can place on the welcome page of the Absalon course room. This video can instill confidence in students as they watch it, allowing them to hear the teacher present the course or empathize with the challenges they might face. Another way is to prove actively that no harm is done when giving wrong answers during the learning phase. E.g., you may use anonymous digital quizzes in your lectures where the right answer is not obvious and subsequent discussion of the wrong answers is part of the feedback and learning process.

Watch an example of a welcome video by professor Nicole Schmitt (in Danish)