– Hi everyone. I’m Niya, the Faculty Developer here at OneHE, and I’m glad to be back with our Teaching Tips series. Today our conversation is going to centre around the benefits of sending a welcome letter or email or message depending on your modality to your students. And again, whether you’re teaching online, onsite, or in a hybrid format. A well-crafted welcome letter can make a significant difference in the positive associations that your students have with their learning experience. Let’s jump right into three key benefits of sending this letter.

Benefit number one is that it establishes a pathway for early communication. So sending a welcome message of any kind sets the tone for open communication between you and your learners from the start. Early and frequent communication is linked to higher levels of student engagement and satisfaction in the research. And a welcome letter kind of establishes a three-part communication pathway. It’s a way for you and students to talk about essential course information. It’s a way for you and students to learn a little bit about each other, and it’s a way to encourage students to reach out to you with any questions or concerns. So it’s a pathway of reciprocity. Even though you are initiating and sending the welcome message, it’s not a transactional one-way interaction.

Benefit number two is that sending this welcome letter creates a sense of belonging. A personalised welcome letter can help students feel valued and included. Now, some of you may have LMSs that allow you to use HTML to insert students’ names into every message so that it does look personalised. Or if you don’t have those technological capabilities, you can find other ways to personalise it by talking about the term or semester that you’re working within, the specific course number, there are lots of ways to add that personal element. Research has shown that students who feel a sense of belonging are more likely to be engaged and successful in their studies, so any way that you can make that belonging appear in this welcome letter is going to be beneficial to you in your learners, and you can humanise those interactions too by sharing your enthusiasm for the course, acknowledging the diverse backgrounds and experiences that you’re excited for your students to bring to the learning opportunity, and just making it known to students that you want them to be there, they are welcome and they’re going to add value to those experiences.

The third benefit is that sending this letter can help you set clear, so not only is a welcome letter, a great opportunity to humanise the experience to make students feel a sense of belonging and encouragement, but it’s also a great way to outline course expectations, highlight important dates, make a nod to any required materials. Now, a welcome letter is not a syllabus. We don’t want to regurgitate all of that same information, and we don’t wanna be too redundant, but research has shown that setting clear expectations, providing a little bit of a forecast for learners can reduce student anxiety and mitigate student confusion, which will lead to a more focused and productive learning environment. I have the saying that clarity is caring, made manifest, especially for me as an educator in online environments, but I really think that applies to any modality, and so the more clear we can be in a welcome letter about what the experience is gonna entail, the more caring we can show to our learners and to ourselves.

Now that we’ve discussed three benefits, let’s talk about three take and try tips so that you can create a welcome letter of your own tip. Number one, we’re gonna focus on the humanity. Be personal and warm to your comfort level. Of course, we talked about personalising, addressing students by name if possible, but also share a little bit about yourself. Include some tidbits about your teaching philosophy. What gets you excited about the subject that you’re all gonna be learning together? This again, emphasises that human approach and helps to create a culture of belonging where students feel comfortable approaching you include essential information. We talked again about how you may wanna repeat some of the highlights from the syllabus course objectives, important dates, your contact information, your teaching philosophy.

Again, this is gonna help students feel prepared and informed before the course begins, but it’s a careful balance. You don’t wanna overwhelm learners, but you do wanna provide that clarity, and you’ll just have to juggle it a little bit to figure out what’s the right amount of content to be including in your own welcome letter, and then encourage engagement. Invite students to respond to your letter. Again, this is coming from you, but it’s not necessarily a one way transaction. Students can be invited to respond to you with questions they can invited to respond to you, to introduce themselves and share a little bit about their own learning goals and their hopes for the experience.

Again, this early sense of engagement can build a sense of community and open lines of communication right from the start and sometimes even before the start of the start. And there you have it. We have talked about three key benefits of sending a welcome message to your students, and three practical tips for you to get started. Remember by establishing early communication, creating a sense of belonging, and setting clear expectations, you can help your students feel more connected and more prepared for success in whatever educational experience you’re going to share with them. Thanks for watching and happy educating.