Starting the Term with Intention

Originally published August 29, 2025

Another academic year is beginning!

As students start moving into residence in Waterloo and Brantford this weekend, there’s an excitement on campus, and with it, the reminder that every year brings a unique cohort of students and unique opportunities for our teaching.

The first day of class can be fueled with anticipation and excitement for both students and instructors, and it’s also an opportunity to form lasting impressions and set students up for success (Cavanagh, 2016). Opening students to the possibilities and your passions for your subject and sharing the purpose and intention of your course can lead to a transformative term. When planning your first day of class, consider incorporating strategies to create clarity and community for your students:

Create relationality and foster community in your course

• Learn your students’ names: Whether you are great at memorizing names or struggle with connecting names to faces, there are multiple pathways forward to success. Challenge yourself to learn as many names as you can to support students’ feelings of belonging. Approaches like using name tags that you collect and hand back each week, a seating chart, or asking to share their name when they raise their hand can begin to build your connections. Explore the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast featuring Michelle Miller for more strategies for learning your students’ names.

• Start your first class with an ice breaker: Whether you would like to use one that is connected to your course content, or simply want to loosen things up, start the first day with a low-risk opportunity for students to get to know each other, to create a sense of fun and engagement in your class. In virtual classes, this can occur through discussion boards, collaborative documents, or break-out rooms.

• Build community and belonging: Consider how you could construct a “community of inquiry” for deep and meaningful learning experiences in your course by not only developing cognitive engagement but also your sustained teacher presence and positive social relationships among students (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000). Starting the term by explaining why community is important to learning and how you expect your students to engage with each other will set the tone for the term, and support your students’ willingness to lean into the affective side of learning. Let students know that they are an important part of an accountable, diverse and dynamic learning community and that their unique contributions matter to the success of the course. Intentionally starting on the first day to create relationality, inclusion, and feelings of belonging can help create a transformative term and academic achievement (Garcia, 2022; Dost & Mazzoli Smith, 2023; Dewsbury and Brame 2019).

Share your course design and policies with relevance and transparency

• Clarify course policies: Simply reading your course policies to your students or expecting them to read the syllabus themselves is not enough to support students’ sustained knowledge of course expectations. Consider how you will discuss, in accessible language, the relevance of your policies on academic integrity, use of GenAI, late submissions, as well as Laurier-specific policies, such as Laurier’s Religious and Spiritual Accommodations policy. A syllabus quiz can be a way to check and reinforce student understanding. 

• Lift the veil of higher education: and be transparent about the what, why and how of your course structure and assessments. This can help alleviate multiple emails of the same questions and ensure that all students have access to the same information to be successful in your course. Connect course learning outcomes to assessments and in-class activities to help students understand your pedagogical choices and give them a road map of where they’re going and how to get there. (For more, see the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) resources). 

• Discuss participation: How will you expect your students to engage with each other, and with you? Discussing your approach to the boundaries of engagement, expectations for preparation, and guidelines for group and class discussions will promote a safe and exciting learning environment for everyone.

Explain the significance of your course in the program and students’ lives

• Get to know your students: Whether through in-class discussions or polls with iClickers or a pre-course survey on MyLS, finding out more about your students’ backgrounds and their motivations will help you situate your course in their overall learning journey.  

• Encourage motivation: To prepare students for the challenges of learning, share your perspective on how your course fits within the program progression, connects to industry or community relevance, and promotes personal growth and development. 

Whether you are teaching a large class, smaller groups, undergraduate or graduate class, and in any mode of delivery, starting the term with intention will support student success and provide you with a positive teaching experience.  

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