The First Day of Class

The first day of class is crucial both for your students and for you. This guide by educator and author James Lang will help you make opening day as effective as possible.

This guide from the DePaul University Teaching Commons outlines strategies for introducing yourself, your students, and your course, as well as options for going over a syllabus and making that first class an active and engaging one.

Written for physics instructors, this guide from Stephanie Chasteen is broadly applicable to any course that will feature active learning instruction. The guide provides advice for structuring the first day to orient students to this kind of instruction, which might be new to them.

"A Liquid Syllabus is an accessible, public website that incorporates a brief, friendly welcome video and course information written in welcoming, student-centered language." This guide from Michelle Pacansky-Brock walks you through the creation of a liquid syllabus.

In this oft-cited 2007 study, two psychology instructors provide students with different first-day experiences, then track the students' ratings of the course and the instructor and their own motivation over time. They find that the first-day experience matters a lot for student motivation.

This 2019 study considers a particular strategy for the first day of a psychology class, asking students to generate and discuss questions about the course topic. This strategy led to more favorable impressions of the course that persisted over time.