Student introductions

By fostering community among your students, you can increase their sense of belonging and motivation to learn. One of the most common ways to welcome students to an online course is inviting students to introduce themselves to one another.

Through these self-introductions, students can learn of and connect with peers with myriad backgrounds, interests, or goals in the class. By building connections with peers early, students can become more willing to learn from one another and, by asking students to share about themselves, you communicate that they matter and belong (University of Arts London, 2020).

What could self-introductions include?

As you plan for self-introduction opportunities for your students, you may wonder: What could I ask students to share with one another? Your prompts for self-introductions could include the following:

• Name or nicknames

• Pronouns

• Major

• Career aspirations

• Interests or hobbies

• Favorite books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, or video games

• Personal learning goals for the class

Students could receive structured prompts to help them introduce themselves to one another. These include “fill in the blanks” or use sentence frames (“My goals for this class include __________”).

Please note it is best practice to not require students to share anything they would prefer not to, such as their location or their age. You may like to give students agency and choice in terms of what they include in their introductions.

To promote further engagement with introductions, you may like to ask students to post their introductions as Panopto videos rather than as text posts to a Canvas discussion board. Video introductions let students see each other and increase the meaningfulness of this activity.

Ice-breaker questions and activities

As students move through their classes, self-introductions may come to feel like a familiar and trite activity. To infuse more life and novelty into these, you may ask more novel and frankly fun questions. Examples of such questions include the following:

• What are three adjectives that would best describe you?

• If you received a million dollars but could only use it for a good cause, what would you do?

• Who is the fictional character with whom you most identify, and why?

• If you could live at any point in history, which one would you choose, and why?

• Which place would you most like to visit, and why?

If you can dedicate more time to an ice-breaker activity than a quick question, consider these engaging activities to give students more opportunity to get to know each other.

• Introducing each other: You could ask students to introduce themselves in groups (using Zoom breakout rooms or Canvas groups). When the whole class reunites, students are then asked to introduce not themselves but rather each other.

• Mapping our stories: You could ask students to mark their hometowns, current locations, or most memorable or favorite places on a Google Map (from Liz du Plessis at the University of Missouri).

• Doing “About Me” slideshows treasure hunt: Students create “about me” slideshows to introduce themselves to their classmates, and then they must search through these slideshows to complete a “treasure hunt” (from Jeff Goodman at Appalachian State University).

There is a wide array of ice-breaker activities that you can use to spark student interest and engagement. Please use the resources below to learn more strategies:

• Examples of online ice-breaking activities (University of North Texas)

• Online icebreaker ideas (University of Washington Bothell)

• 35 icebreakers perfect for virtual or hybrid meetings (Slido)

• Self-affirming icebreakers (Michelle Pacansky-Brock)

Private introductions to instructor

In addition to giving students the opportunity to introduce themselves to one another, you may like to offer students a private survey, where they can share more about themselves and any needs or concerns they may have. “A Getting to Know You Survey in week one is an important part of fostering trust and laying the foundation for the instructor-student relationship you will leverage to challenge students and hold them all to the same high expectations” (Pacansky-Brock, n.d.). Pacansky-Brock provides a list of potential questions to use in such surveys.

Only you would see the responses to this survey. Students could share personal challenges they face, such as internet access, life circumstances, and more. If, for example, a student is working full-time and a single parent, they can share their concerns about time management.

Sending this survey early would demonstrate care for your students and allow you to quickly change the course based on students’ needs (Fedesco, Brockman, & Hall, 2021). Students will appreciate your proactive concern about their lives and needs. As you receive responses from students, you may like to email some of them individually and address their concerns to further demonstrate your care and interest in their learning and well-being.

References

Fedesco, H.N., Brockman, A.J., & Hall, E. (2021). Assessing student needs in your course. Vanderbilt University Course Development Resources. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/cdr/module-2/assessing-student-needs-in-your-online-course/

Pacansky-Brock, M. (n.d.). Getting to know you survey. Michelle Pacansky-Brock. Retrieved November 3, 2023, from https://brocansky.com/humanizing/student-info

Supiano, B. (2023, November 2). The social classroom. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-social-classroom

University of the Arts London. (2020, July 31). Belonging in online learning environments [Audio podcast episode]. In Interrogating Spaces. https://interrogatingspaces.buzzsprout.com/683798/4795271-belonging-in-online-learning-environments

Created on January 16, 2024