Non-Term Advising Team Presents at DVSAC

GMercyU’s Non-Term Advising team presented at the Delaware Valley Student Affairs Conference (DVSAC) on Reimagining New Student Orientation for an Online Population on March 3.

For the past year, the Non-Term Advising team has been working on revising New Student Orientation for GMercyU’s Non-Term students with the goal of making it more engaging and beneficial. In prior years, the orientation process was a long, virtual session given in one evening that overloaded the student with all of the information they needed.

The new orientation process is now broken into two parts. Part one is a Canvas course dedicated to policy and informational content and the second is a shorter, live virtual session which gives students the opportunity to personally connect with their advisor, program director, and other members of their cohort.

The team’s audience at the conference shared their experiences in creating online orientation in a post-pandemic world and they were interested to hear about the potential success rates in the future. Audience members appreciated the outlining of GMercyU’s process and the use of Canvas as a resource hub for student information.

Top takeaways from the presentation include thinking about alternative ways to present content online and finding ways to make it engaging. The team’s goal is also to create partnerships on campus and utilize preexisting resources to achieve goals.