Preserving Engagement: Orientation amidst a Global Pandemic

Abstract

When we met in November of 2019 to hold our annual orientation brainstorming session, our New Student & Family Programs (NSFP) staff dreamed of additional small groups, affinity group spaces, revamped evening programming, and increased opportunities for student connections. Four short months and many hours of planning/training later, we found ourselves in a similar brainstorming session. Except this time, it was late March, we were facing a global pandemic, and we had just shifted our orientation season completely online in response to COVID-19. Like most orientation, transition, and retention professionals around the world, we found ourselves devastated and overwhelmed. We had a very short turnaround time (18 days), but one thing was essential for us—we would preserve as much student/family engagement and interaction as possible.
 In this article, we explore the decision-making process, methods, action steps, and considerations for implementing a virtual orientation that embraced student and familial engagement despite the global pandemic.

Current Interventions for the Digital Onboarding of First-Year Students in Higher Education Institutions: A Scoping Review

“…This whole-family approach to digital and virtual onboarding was able to reduce fears in the parents of first-year college and university students. Along similar lines, Hughes et al [36] and Prior et al [34] welcomed intervention practices that included families and other guests in addition to incoming students. Zoom (created by Eric Yuan, San Jose, CA, USA) and other WEB 2.0 technologies have enabled universities or colleges to offer this form of counseling interventions.…”

“…In this intervention, information can be transmitted to students and academic advisors can be met through interaction between incoming students and academic advisors. Furthermore, "Ask the Expert" panels [36] or introducing new classroom environments [31] could easily be done digitally or virtually to engage a large number of students in conveying onboarding information and promote socialization between these students.…”

“…Post-orientation modules [34] X Parents and friends meetings, webinars, and Q&A sessions [34,36] X X Digital student support services [5] X X…”

“…Two SOEs followed a mixed-method post design without a pre-measure [29,32], while two employed a post-survey design [28,40]. One post-survey design was supported by video viewership tracking [41], another featured a longitudinal panel survey design [36], and one followed a pre-post design [37]. Lastly, one study was based on a quasi-experimental pre-post design [35].…”

Examining undergraduate student perceptions and engagement during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The other area of interest in campus programs was that of new student orientation. A case study from New Student & Family Programs staff at Florida State University, identified the considerations that were made to shift new student orientation from in-person to virtual orientation, discussing the implementation of virtual programming like small groups and ask the experts panel, and family webinars ( Hughes et al, 2021 ).…”