Title: T: Introduce Yourself to Your Classmates
Course: Canvas Course Template 1 > Section: T: Week 0: Start Here

Start Here | Discussion

A discussion-board introduction is an excellent way to start community-building, even for classes meeting face to face. It allows students with a wide variety of communication preferences to introduce themselves in the way they wish to be introduced to their peers.

One challenge with "introduce yourself" survey questions or first-day live introduction questions is that questions are rarely neutral, and questions that appeal to or support one student in sharing about themselves may indicate to another student that they do not belong in the group, however well-intentioned. A classic example is asking where students went on their last vacation, a question that signals that having money and free time for travel and vacations are norms and that leaves those without both unable to meaningfully participate.

One great option is simply providing multiple questions to choose from: then students can select in to what is meaningful or interesting to them. To that end, this discussion thread offers many questions. Please omit, modify, or replace as you wish for a more manageable selection. A number of these questions come from the practice of Dr. Catherine Tan (Sociology Professor at Vassar).

Purpose:

This discussion thread is a place for you to get to know each other and start building community. The audience for what you write here is your peers, so have fun both sharing a bit about who you are, and learning a bit about your classmates!

Task:

Below you will see a description of how to include a photo of yourself on Canvas, questions to choose from to answer, and how to engage with your classmates' posts.

1. To include a photo on your Canvas profile, (if you don't have one already) take your cursor to the "People" tab you see on the left; right click on "People" and go to "open link in new tab." If you don't have a photo, click on the circular image area, and upload your desired photo.  It can be an actual photo of you or any other school-appropriate image you'd like to use. Note that others in the UO community will also be able to see this photo in Canvas.

2. Decide whether you want to write your profile or record a video or audio response (if you want to record a video, you can do that right in the "reply" box by clicking into it and then clicking on the "media" icon).

3. Tell us your name, and if you wish, your pronouns. Then choose 3-4 questions from the list below that feel most interesting to you, and use them to tell us about you (in roughly 250 words if writing, or around two minutes if talking) by clicking into "Reply." Possible questions include:
  - Where have you lived?
  - Who inspires you and why?
  - What is one thing you want your peers to know about you?
  - What is one thing you want to know about your peers?
  - Why did you choose this class?
  - What is your dream job?
  - If you could have any super-hero power what would it be and why?
  - What is your favorite free time activity?
  - If you could live in a fictional town (book/tv/movie), where would it be?
  - What is the best bad TV show?
  - What’s your favorite “life hack”?
  - Describe one strange thing about your hometown.
  - When you cook for yourself, what is your go-to?
  - If you have a pet, what is one of their eccentric behaviors?
  - If you had to be on a reality/game show, which would it be?
  - What is the most under-rated snack?
  - If your life was made into a movie, what’s at least one song/artist that would be on the soundtrack?
  - What question do you wish was on this list, and what would you answer to it?

4. After you are done, click "Post Reply."

5. Read/watch at least 2-3 posts your classmates have created.

6. Reply briefly to at least two other students' posts. You could ask a question, point out a common interest, etc.  Just be sure your comments engage with what they've shared and are genuine.

7. Feel free to read several of the comments others have posted.

Criteria for Success:

I will not be grading the content of what you share. You will have succeeded in this assignment if you have created a post that lets people know a little about you as an individual, explore who else is in the class, and post genuine comments to two of your peers. All students who do this will earn a complete score for the assignment.