How to Teach a Good First Day of Class

In his advice guide "How to Teach A Good First Day of Class", James Lang, Ph.D., Director of the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence and author of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, provides four principles to help you "decide which activities and approaches will best draw your students into [your] course and prepare them to learn."

(Viewing Lang's article now requires signing up for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Joining is free of charge. A succinct quick tip on this topic is available without site registration.)

Below is a quick list of the key points from the article. The full article goes into more depth and links to resources and studies along with examples of different types of classes and what happens after the first day. The Chronicle of Higher Ed often posts quality articles like this and you may find a free account of use.

Key points

On the first day of class, students form a lasting impression of you and the course, so the first day is "a big deal."
The first day is the best day to spark curiosity
- Share what drew you into the field
- Connect the field to student concerns and interests
Build community
- Humanize yourself with "humorous asides, self-disclosure, or a more formal narrated description of your own intellectual journey"
- If possible, greet each student. "Let students know you're glad they joined you for the semester."
- Give students a chance to talk to each other. It doesn't have to be a structured icebreaker.
Learning
- Ask students to try a cognitive task before they are ready. As they draw upon relevant knowledge that they may already possess, they are becoming more prepared to learn.
- Invite students to think about what strategies they will use to succeed in the course and what support they might need.
Expectations
- Address students' expectations.. what will the course be like? What supplies and materials will they need? Will there by any special obligations like field trips or other time-intensive activities that differ from a more typical course?
Preview the space if you will have a physical classroom
Practice with the technology you will use
Students will notice what you are wearing. What impression do you want to make? Do you want to have a more formal and authoritative presence or do you want to have a more relaxed atmosphere? If you have concerns that some aspect of your identity will cause students to take you less seriously as an expert in your field, consider ways to address that.

First Day Toolkit

The Student Experience Project (SEP) created a First Day Toolkit to help faculty use evidence-based practices to revise their syllabi and help advance student success. The toolkit includes: