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Guide: Starting your cohort and welcoming students
Guide: Starting your cohort and welcoming students

Learn how to kick off your cohort successfully

Madeleine avatar
Written by Madeleine
Updated over 3 months ago

Summary

  • Welcome your students to your cohort by orienting them to the Student Home.

  • Set up your Student Home and customize the intro template.

  • Send your students a welcome message via the Announcements channel.

Welcoming your students after they enroll

Once a student enrolls, they will:

  1. 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").

  2. 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:

  3. Automatically receive invitations for events. If you haven't published any events, enrolled students will receive the invitations as soon as you publish them.

  4. 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.

Setting up your course's Student Home

Maven gives your students one centralized hub to find everything related to your course—the Student Home. They can find the calendar, syllabus, and cohort community here.

  1. Before you send an orientation email, make sure your Student Home (portal) is open.

  2. Turn on the Maven community feature.

  3. Customize the intro template for your course community.

  4. Finalize your syllabus.

  5. Integrate your Zoom account so you can easily create Zoom meetings for events and automatically upload recordings.

  6. 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; 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 the 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. All sessions are recorded and shared in the Maven portal. Please make sure these are in your calendar. If they aren't, please let me know.

Community. Join our Maven community and introduce yourself. This is where you'll connect with fellow students and review 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 to create your account.

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!

Next steps:

  • Introduce yourself in the community at [maven.com/school/course/home]

  • Our first workshop is on [Cohort Start Date]. Check your calendar or the Events section of the student portal for the Zoom link.

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 join: [join link].

What's next?

After preparing the Student Home and sending students an orientation email, prepare 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].


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