8 College Success Skills: Welcome to Lehman

As mentioned in the prior chapter, this course is designed with three over arching modules.  Within the first module there are what Brightspace calls submodules.  (These are like content folders in Blackboard.)  Each submodule contains reading and activities.

In this part of the course, students learn about Lehman, its systems, structure, and geography. They also think about their own strengths (and challenges).  Students often mention wanting “The College Experience,” and sometimes that just involves living a dorm away from home.  We can’t provide that, but we can help them see ways that the  college experience is about more than dorms. Helping students to think about what they want their college experience to be and how to achieve that can really help the transition to college.

The submodules have been designed to not take more than 15-20 of class time to explain and then the students should be able to complete them as homework. However, you can decide to use class times to focus on ones that you decide are important to your course. They should take students 90-120 minutes, but this will depend on the student. Remember students for whom English is a language they have learned may need more time.

Submodules

Submodule 0: Introductions  and Getting Started

Think about an ice breaker for students to introduce themselves to each other. Encourage them to connect. You could use a discussion board for that, but making sure that students know each others names.

We suggest that you ask students for a phonetic spelling of their name, a recording of how it is pronounced, and their pronouns because, in fact, it is hard to tell even cisgender identity when there are students from so may different backgrounds. We also suggest you have them write down the names of their professors and their emails.  A surprising number of students never figure out the names of their instructors! Doing this will really help them.

Many students will have not seen a syllabus before.  Take the time to go over the parts of a syllabus and where to find key information. Because the students will mainly have all the same classes you could also go over their other syllabuses to show them similarities and differences.

In addition, this is a good chance to take a few minutes to have students install the Pulse App for Brightspace and the Lehman App. They can also install the Outlook app for managing their emails and calendars.