The First Day of Classes

As we approach the first day of classes, I thought a pertinent paper to share might be this 2011 article entitled, “The First Day: It Happens Only Once by Anderson, Mcguire & Cory.

This research shares that findings on what works best on the first day are mixed between the standard cover the syllabus to a more contemporary active approach of engaging the students on day one. The purpose of the research was to identify feasible goals for the first day of class and to present an overview of the limited research related to first-day expectations”. Overall, the research findings were mixed, which supports a foundational approach to faculty development, which is every faculty has a different teaching philosophy, class size, students with varying cognitive backgrounds, and discipline-specific norms. This paper does share a variety of approaches to first day activities, and hopefully many faculty members will be able to identify to one or more, and perhaps discover a few, which they may wish to try.

Perlman and McCann (1999) have found that students prefer that the entire first class not be focused solely dissemination of basic course information. Perhaps a mix of course information and an appropriate, discipline-related way to engage students would work in most cases.