Education Policy, Business and Technology

Taking Student Orientation Online

Campus Technology: While the traditional orientation process at the University of Colorado Boulder was meant to bond new students to the institution from their first moments on campus, its structure often had just the opposite effect. Two early-summer "welcome days" packed with face-to-face presentations and panels blasting participants with a firehose of information were bound to leave students feeling numb. By the time they returned to campus in August, they'd have forgotten much of what they'd learned. And most of the participants for that early orientation were Colorado residents; non-residents would typically only show up in the week before school began. That meant orientation was timed to overwhelm them just as they were about to dive into their new college careers.

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