Turning on a (Virtual) Dime How to Overhaul New Student Orientation in Three Weeks

Abstract

This case study will describe the rapid transition our Office of Student Success and Advising and Office of Admissions made from March 11 to April 7 of 2020 in shifting all academic advising and New Student Orientation from in-person to remote efforts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office of Student Success and Advising provides academic advising to all undergraduate students out of a single unit on campus (separate from any academic School). We partner with the Office of Admissions as they funnel students to New Student Orientation, where advisors and related offices offer a rich program that culminates in students enrolling for their first semester. Our hallmark is our personal touch, so one might have predicted that being suddenly forced to rely heavily on technology to deliver our services would have greatly hampered our effectiveness. However, we leveraged our positive relationships as colleagues, diverse knowledge of different technologies related to admissions, advising, and teaching, and support of campus leadership in surging additional staff to our efforts to create both remote orientation and remote advising innovations that honor our developmental, holistic approach to student learning. Having successfully launched and achieved stronger enrollment outcomes than expected, we are convinced that our caring and collaborative professional culture is actually enhanced by our new embrace of technology. In addition, the broader array of technical and human touchpoints provides increased opportunity for assessing student learning and satisfaction with our process. Our practice is nothing like we imagined it would be prior to this experience, but we have already agreed that we will continue to apply many of these approaches into the future.