The first several sessions in any course are important to set a tone for the learning culture of the class. This is especially true here at CEU where our students are new to college and don’t have a good grasp of college-going skills. Lots of important information about course requirements and expectations are tossed at them while they are still getting adjusted to strange places and faces. The situation is further complicated in my courses, which are high tech and paper free.

So I find it valuable to break the ice with lots of tangibles—things students can put their hands on, toy with, laugh at, and puzzle over. Candy is always a good option and I distribute it freely. For every course I provide each student with a CD containing some relevant music plus instructions on how to access the online syllabus through the course website.

In HIST 1700, I conduct an opening day exercise using boxes filled with historic images and facsimile documents. I divide the class into teams of two. The first step is for the partners to interview each other and fill out a card with their partner’s name and background. Then I invite them to open their box and pick through the materials. I call out a series of questions and walk among the desks as students answer. Does anyone have a picture of a president? Hold it up. Who is that? Students often hold up an image and ask me who or what it is? Students often know many of the images and this helps re-enforce that they do, in fact, have a good body of historical knowledge to begin with. But other images are unknown and they are curious about them. I tell the students that this is what studying history is like—building on a base of knowledge, but being curious to know more. The more you know, the more your desire to know increases.

I’ll pull some images from someone’s box and ask how the two images are similar or different. Doing this several times, I help students with the basic concepts of race, class, and gender and introduce them as analytical tools in studying the past. Then I ask the students to arrange their images in chronological order. Since there are no dates on the images, the students have to use deductive reasoning to find order in the mixture of images. Students have lots of fun and they get to know each other. It’s a nice start for the class.