Faculty Forum

Abstract

The faculty-oriented literature on the first meeting of a class presents many suggestions for content and process. Student data support these suggestions except those urging starting course content and students' divergent views of icebreakers. Being attuned to both student opinions and the faculty literature will help faculty prepare and teach a good first class. Based on student data, 10 of 11 participating faculty made voluntary changes in how they taught the first class meeting the next semester.

Engaging ICT Engineering Undergraduates in a Management Subject through First Day of Class Activities: An Empirical Study

“…The very first day of class can be seen as an exceptional opportunity to implement activities that may help develop students' expectations [12,52,53], attitudes [13,54], engagement [12,[55][56][57][58], or motivation [13,14], while also determining the learning environment and class atmosphere for the remaining sessions of the subject [59,60]. Although such actions are obviously designed to improve class dynamics, some may have negative effects on students' perceptions.…”

“…In an empirical study, Eskine & Hamer [63] asked 230 undergraduate students to replicate the aforementioned Perlman & McCann empirical study [53]. The authors asked the identical open-ended questions and classified the answers according the same seventeen categories that were formerly identified in the study performed by Perlman & McCann.…”

“…Once all the questionnaires had been collected, the answers given by the students were reclassified in homogeneous categories independent of the literal wording of the answers. The methodology that was followed was the same performed by Perlman & McCann [53] and Eskine & Hammer [63]. However, homogenization was not initially restrained to the former taxonomy resulting from the Perlman & McCann's empirical study [53] in order to allow new items to be identified, resulting in the items listed in Table 1.…”

“…The methodology that was followed was the same performed by Perlman & McCann [53] and Eskine & Hammer [63]. However, homogenization was not initially restrained to the former taxonomy resulting from the Perlman & McCann's empirical study [53] in order to allow new items to be identified, resulting in the items listed in Table 1. Once the classification was completed, eventual matches in terms of different wording were identified to compare findings, despite keeping some topics disaggregated that were linked to motivation and utility of the subject once the data was analyzed.…”

The Class Interview: Student Engagement in Courses Covering Sensitive Topics

“…In order to prepare students for learning about sensitive topics and help students become more comfortable with each other, instructors often facilitate icebreaker or first-day activities early in the semester (DiClementi & Handelsman, 2005;Henslee, Burgess, & Buskist, 2006;Perlman & McCann, 1999). Higgins (1999) suggests that instructors should launch each semester with 'unconventional first days' (p. 259) to intrigue students and foster deeper connections to the course from the start.…”