Pleased to Meet You! Welcoming Students to Online Education

Over the past five years, eLearning at UMass Amherst has developed multitiered orientations for new online students. We provide departmental in-person presentations, an online wiki, a webinar series, and online course. How do we do it? We'll share with you everything we've got. We'll cover the history and the details of each option, including developing content and facilitating the process. Did we mention that all of this is done using free web-based or university-sponsored resources? We'll talk about what has worked well and what hasn't, and how we are going to improve in the future.

Outcomes: Define the variety of formats for onboarding and orientation of new online students * Articulate the needs and resources necessary to develop orientations and onboarding activities for online students * Develop orientation and onboarding activities for new online students