Freshmen get head start on orientation

June 14, 2012

Orientation for students in the Oxford College 2012 entering class will be held August 24 to 28, but they now have access to an online tool that can give them a head start on finding out everything they need to know as Oxford students.  

Beginning in mid-June, first-year students will be invited to log into PreArrival Essentials, a site based on Blackboard, a Web-based information platform used by Emory University and many other universities across the country. 

PreArrival Essentials informs students on a broad array of topics such as placement testing, registration, residence hall living and campus life. The Prearrival Essential site links them easily to placement testing and the advising questionnaire that students must complete in June and July.  The topics were selected based on feedback from the entering class of 2011 as well as a survey of those questions Oxford most commonly receives from new students and their parents.  

Topics will be delivered via video, slideshows and Camtasia presentations (a screen-capture application) as well as a live webinar where students can watch a presentation and email their questions to presenters for real-time response. New topics will be posted weekly through the start of orientation, and students can review topics at their own convenience as often as they wish.  

PreArrival Essentials is intended to enhance orientation by giving freshmen an earlier look into topics they are eager to know about.  It is also designed to alleviate the large quantity of information that must be absorbed during traditional on-campus orientation.

Staff from Academic Services, Residential Life, Enrollment Services, Oxford Library, Office of Student Involvement and Leadership, Information Technology and Oxford faculty as well as colleagues from the Atlanta campus have collaborated to offer this pilot program.

Students will receive notification about PreArrival Essentials on their OPUS account and their new student checklist as well as a personal letter from Academic Dean Kenneth L. Anderson encouraging them to use PreArrival Essentials throughout the summer.