“It’s in the syllabus!” doesn’t work: How can we best onboard students to our classes?

Students start new classes every semester learning new policies, professor personalities, and how to succeed. We know from organizational onboarding literature how overwhelming it can be to start one new job in one organization, but we are asking students to do that three to five times! In this symposium, attendees will work together to map their own onboarding practices to challenges student face during the first week. We will then create a list of best practices and share our research from a study conducted in Fall 2024. Attendees will leave with at least one way to improve their onboarding practices.