Summary
Welcome your students to your cohort by orienting them to the Student Portal and cohort community.
Set up your Student Portal and customize the intro template.
Send your students a welcome message using the Broadcast feature.
What happens when students enroll in your course?
Once a student enrolls, they will:
Receive an automated email letting them know they've enrolled successfully; you can edit this email in the Emails tab of your dashboard (under "Automations").
Be directed to a page where they can complete their profile, share your course, meet their peers, and review the syllabus and schedule. Here's an example of how this looks:
Automatically receive invitations for events. If you haven't published any events, enrolled students will receive the invitations as soon as you publish them.
Students will automatically get access to your syllabus and community when the portal opens. Until then, you can polish your content and start welcoming students to the cohort.
Set up the student portal
Maven gives your students one centralized hub to find everything related to your course—the student portal. This is where they can find the calendar, syllabus, and cohort community.
Before you send an orientation email, make sure your Student Portal is open.
Turn on the Maven community feature.
Customize the intro template for your course community.
Finalize your syllabus
Integrate your Zoom account so you can easily create Zoom meetings for events and automatically upload recordings.
Create and publish your events.
Send an orientation announcement
About 1-2 days before your cohort starts, use the #announcements channel in your course community to welcome all enrolled students. When you post in #announcements, an email will be sent to all your enrolled students. Here's a template you can use as a starting point. Feel free to adjust it to your needs.
Please note the variables in this template (ex. [ Course Name ] will not automatically adjust, so you will need to input your course information. The Maven community channels don't yet support variables and not all the variables in this template are available via the broadcast email feature. If you're sending this welcome letter as a broadcast email, it's always best to send a test email to yourself first to check formatting.
Subject: Kicking off [Course Name]
Hi [Student Name or all],
I’m so excited for you to join me for this upcoming cohort of [Course Name]!
We’re getting started on [Cohort Start Date], and I just want to get you oriented to how I’ll run this cohort.
Events. You’ll receive Calendar invites to each live workshop. Please make sure these are in your calendar. If they aren't, please let me know.
Community. Join our cohort community to connect with fellow students and check out the resources in the syllabus. Click this link to access the community: [maven.com/school/course/home]. Use the email address you’re receiving this email with.
Syllabus/Pre-work. The syllabus is where I’ll house all the pre-readings and bonus materials. There’s a small amount of reading you need to do before each workshop so you get the foundational concepts. Check it out here [maven.com/school/course/syllabus]
You’ve joined an incredible group of individuals and I’m excited you're here. This will be a collaborative experience - that’s right, no sitting back!
Our first workshop is on [Cohort Start Date]. Check your calendar or the Events section of the student portal for the Zoom link. In case you miss a session, each workshop is recorded and uploaded into the student portal.
If you have any questions, just reply directly to this email and I’ll help you out.
See you soon!
[Your Name]
P.S. Learning is more fun with friends. If you know someone who should be a part of this, send them this link to apply: [apply link].
What's next?
After you prepare the student portal and send students an orientation email, get ready to teach your live sessions! Check out this Maven workshop facilitation guide to help you get ready for your first live class.
If you still have questions about welcoming your students to your course, please reach out to [email protected].