Designing an Interactive Student Orientation to Build Social Connectedness
Abstract: A new student orientation is arranged to assist students in their adjustment to college. To do so, it is essential for the program to provide students an opportunity to connect to other students, instructors, academic advisors, and the university. Recently, there are several mobile applications developed to promote collaboration and interaction between different parties in a classroom context. In this study, a mobile application designed to enhance collaboration and interaction was embedded into a new student orientation. A posttest only control group design was used to examine the impacts of integrating an interactive and collaborative application on social connectedness and school connectedness. Learning of the content delivered during the orientation was assessed using a pretest-posttest control group design. The results revealed that the integration of the mobile application yielded an increase in score on connectedness with other students, satisfaction toward the orientation.