TILT Master Teacher Initiative
The Master Teacher Initiative (MTI) is a university-wide program to enhance the quality of teaching within CSU’s colleges and libraries.
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January 17, 2025
It is almost time to dive into the spring 2025 semester. This week’s tip is provided by TILT.
Engaging students from Day 1: Planning an impactful first week of classes
By Anastasia Williams, TILT
The opening weeks of your course set the tone for the entire semester. Here’s how to create an engaging, inclusive, and welcoming learning environment from day one.
Use Three Core Principles
1. Build Authentic Connections
· Share Your Story: Briefly explain what excites you about your field and what brought you here. Some instructors share pictures of their pets or mention that they were first-generation students in college. The goal is to set a welcoming humanizing tone.
· Learn Student Names and Their Correct Pronunciations: Use name tents or check students’ Canvas rosters.
· Create Opportunities for Students to Share Their Interests and Goals: Feel free to distribute a survey to learn more about your students’ needs or have a think-pair-share activity to set a personal goal for the course.
2. Provide Clear Expectations
· Share Course Purpose: Explain how the course connects to students’ broader education.
· Discuss Success Strategies: Share specific approaches that have helped previous students succeed in the course. Include information about what office hours are for and how to ask for extensions to minimize the hidden curriculum in the course.
· Provide Assessment Overview: Discuss your feedback approach and grading philosophy.
· Share Resources: Highlight key support services and when/how to use them.
3. Foster Community
· Co-create Classroom Agreements: Develop shared guidelines for classroom interaction.
· Use Icebreakers and Small Group Activities: These help students connect with each other.
· Create Designated Spaces for Questions and Exploration: This could include a discussion board on Canvas.
Effective First Day/Week Activities
Here are some ideas for activities can help establish a supportive learning environment from day one (feel free to adapt them to your context):
1. “Letter to Future Self” Exercise
Ask students to articulate their hopes and goals for the course, which can be revisited at the semester’s end. In engineering courses, having first-year students read and respond to senior students’ reflections on belonging and growth has proven particularly effective (Walton et al., 2017). Students then write a reflection and a letter to a future student “like them” about their transition to university.
2. Core Values Activity
Help students connect course content and their learning to their personal values. Ask students to identify their core values and consider how the course reinforces these principles. This reflection can be captured in a note to their future selves, creating a meaningful touchpoint for later in the semester. See more at Value Relevance Affirmation (Kizilcec, Davis et al., 2017).
3. Debunking myths about your field and/or learning in general
Ask students to share three words to describe someone in your field (e.g., three adjectives to describe a “typical mathematician”), drawing representations of learning (“What does learning look like?”), or sharing visuals of expectations versus reality can spark engaging discussions about preconceptions and learning goals. For example, “What people think I do as a sociology student vs. what I actually do.”
4. Exit Ticket & Temperature Check
End the first class with an exit ticket—a brief anonymous reflection collected on index cards or posted notes.
Here’s a sample prompt:
“After reading the syllabus, write down one thing you are excited about in the course and one thing that is still unclear. Please post your note on the whiteboard before leaving the class.”
This provides immediate feedback to help you adjust subsequent sessions while demonstrating your commitment to student input.
Remember that perfection isn’t the goal. Your authentic commitment to student success and willingness to adapt based on student needs will create a more meaningful learning experience than any single activity or approach. You got this!
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Upcoming at TILT
Teaching Squares – We still have openings!
TILT is excited to host the Spring 2025 Teaching Squares peer observation program! Teaching Squares offers teaching faculty an opportunity to observe colleagues in action as well as reflect on their own teaching practices. A teaching square is a group of four instructors who agree to observe each other a few times during the semester, using an agreed upon set of observation norms based on the Teaching Effectiveness Framework. The program is designed to be a non-evaluative, supportive, and growth-based process and we will have both residential instruction and online faculty in this cohort.
The Initial Kick-off/Training will be on January 30, 8:30 – 10:00am. Teaching Squares will be held per the schedule below. Due to the teaching and community focus of the program, participants must be teaching a course and are expected to attend the initial training and two feedback sessions in addition to observing one class session for each colleague in your square during each observation cycle.
Teaching Squares Schedule
· Kick-off/Initial Training: January 30, 8:30 – 10:00
[Observation Cycle #1: February 3 – February 28]· Feedback Meeting 1: Week of March 3 (90-minutes tbd)
[Observation Cycle #2: March 4 – April 18]· Feedback Meeting 2: Week of April 21 (90-minutes tbd)
If you would like to be part of the cohort, please register for Teaching Squares Kick-off/Training session by January 25th.
Explore opportunities to enhance your teaching and professional growth this spring. Visit the TILT Calendar of Events to sign up.
