Process and Approach to this Work

(1) Environmental Scan

The production of this guide began with a student-led environmental scan. This scan involved reviewing digital pedagogical scholarly journals for examples and/or discussions of arrival activities. The scan was performed using keywords and Boolean search methods in various search engines and databases, including Google Scholar, Scopus, ERIC and University of Toronto Library resources. Keywords included, but were not limited to, “arrival activities,” “student engagement,” “pre-lecture activities,” and “higher education.” The scan identified both arrival activity examples as well as peer-reviewed journal articles, books, magazines, and online resources. Please see Appendix A for a selection of resources.

(2) Curation of Cross-Disciplinary Arrival Activities

Student-researchers solicited examples of arrival activities from instructors across disciplines from multiple institutions. Instructors provided samples of the arrival activities commonly used in their classes, and our team of student designers curated additional arrival activities using these samples as inspiration. A full slide deck of arrival activities can be found in Appendix B.

(3) Collaboration between Student Researchers, Instructors, and Learning Designers

Instructors, learning designers, and graduate and undergraduate students provided contributions and detailed feedback on this guide and on the sample arrival activity slide deck. Of note, instructors and students represent a range of disciplines, institutions and roles within higher education.