INSIGHTS | PERSONALIZED ORIENTATION SCHEDULING
Personalized Orientation Scheduling for Colleges and Universities
How do you deliver a personalized orientation experience when hundreds or thousands of students are moving through the same program?
Not every student necessarily needs to be in the same place, at the same time, for the same activity.
One student may need a session connected to their academic program. Another may be assigned to a different orientation group. Some activities may be required. Others may be optional. Students may also have opportunities to choose among different experiences.
The challenge is not limited to a summer orientation session. Welcome Week, Weeks of Welcome, Family Weekend, and other orientation programs can involve many activities, locations, groups, and campus partners.
The institution knows everything that is happening.
The student has a much simpler question:
What applies to me?
Personalized orientation scheduling is one way colleges and universities can answer that question.
What is orientation scheduling software?
Orientation scheduling software helps colleges and universities organize the sessions, activities, times, locations, groups, and schedules that make up an orientation program.
For some institutions, everyone may follow essentially the same schedule.
For others, different students may need different schedules within the same overall program.
Students may be divided into groups. Academic programs may have different activities. Certain sessions may apply only to particular populations. Some experiences may be assigned by the institution while others allow students to choose.
The important question is not simply:
What is happening during orientation?
It is also:
Where does this student need to be, and when?
A program schedule and a personalized orientation schedule are not always the same thing
A program schedule tells people what is happening.
A personalized orientation schedule helps a student understand which parts of that program apply to them.
That distinction becomes more important as an orientation program becomes more complex.
A college or university may have several sessions occurring at the same time. Students may be divided into groups. Academic programs may have different activities. Some events may be required while others are available by choice.
Publishing the complete program can tell everyone what exists.
It does not necessarily tell each student where they are supposed to go.
A personalized schedule helps connect the larger program to the student’s actual experience.
Personalization does not mean creating a completely different program for every student
A personalized schedule does not require an institution to design thousands of separate orientation programs.
Personalization can come from differences that already exist.
Students might have different schedules because of their academic program, orientation group, residential situation, student population, or another factor the institution has decided matters.
In other cases, students may choose among available activities.
Those approaches can also work together.
Part of the schedule may be assigned by the institution, while another part allows the student to select experiences that are relevant or interesting to them.
The result can be an individualized orientation schedule without requiring every activity to be individually created for every student.
Assigned activities and student choice can coexist
Personalized scheduling does not have to mean complete institutional control or complete student choice.
The institution determines where each approach makes sense.
A summer orientation program might include activities every student is expected to attend, sessions that depend on a student’s academic program or group, and other experiences students can choose.
Welcome Week or Weeks of Welcome may combine assigned activities with a larger collection of events taking place across campus.
Family Weekend may work differently again, with families selecting among activities and building the schedule that makes sense for them.
These programs may look very different.
The scheduling question underneath them is similar:
How does each person get from the full program to the activities that apply to them?
Personalized schedules can support more than summer orientation
Orientation scheduling is not limited to one day or one kind of program.
During summer orientation, students may need schedules that coordinate sessions, groups, locations, advising-related activities, or other responsibilities.
During Welcome Week or Weeks of Welcome, the challenge may involve several days of programming, different student populations, campus partners, assigned experiences, and optional activities.
During Family Weekend, the institution may offer many activities while allowing families to decide what they want to attend.
The program changes.
The underlying responsibility remains: help people understand where they need to be and what applies to them.
A schedule can do more than show a time and location
At its simplest, a schedule answers:
Where do I go, and when?
But an orientation schedule may also help a student understand what an activity is, whether it applies to them, what they should expect, and what comes next.
That can matter before orientation begins.
Giving students access to their schedule in advance can help them understand what their day or program will look like before they arrive.
During orientation, the schedule becomes a practical reference for moving among sessions, activities, and locations.
And when students know where they are supposed to go, staff and orientation leaders may spend less time interpreting the program for them.
Orientation schedules may need to change
Orientation does not always happen exactly as planned.
A room may change. A session may be updated. A student’s circumstances may change. A group assignment may need to move. An optional activity may be added or removed.
A personalized schedule is most useful when it continues to reflect the experience the student is actually expected to follow.
That means colleges and universities evaluating orientation scheduling software may need to consider not only how schedules are created, but what happens when the program changes.
A useful question is:
Can the schedule stay useful while orientation is actually happening?
Personalized schedules can also help the people operating orientation
Students and families may be the most visible users of a schedule, but they are not the only people who may rely on it.
Orientation staff need to understand how students are moving through the program.
Orientation leaders may need to help a student find the next session.
Advisors or campus partners may need to know when particular groups are expected to arrive.
And when students are unsure where they are supposed to be, staff and student leaders often become the people who have to figure it out.
A schedule can therefore become useful to both the person following it and the people helping the program operate.
What should colleges and universities look for in orientation scheduling technology?
There is no single scheduling model every institution should adopt.
A better evaluation starts with the program you already operate.
Consider:
- Does everyone follow the same schedule, or do schedules vary?
- What determines when students need different activities?
- Are sessions assigned, selected by students, or both?
- Are students divided into groups?
- Do academic programs, student populations, or other institutional factors affect schedules?
- Does the program span multiple days or locations?
- Do students need their schedules before they arrive?
- What information beyond time and location would be useful?
- What happens when a session, room, assignment, or student circumstance changes?
- Do staff and orientation leaders need visibility into student schedules?
- Which parts of scheduling should orientation own?
- How does scheduling connect to the rest of the orientation operation?
Those questions move the conversation beyond simply publishing a calendar.
They help define what the institution actually needs scheduling technology to support.
From publishing a schedule to helping students navigate their experience
A college or university may begin its search looking for orientation scheduling software, a way to create a personalized orientation schedule, or technology that can provide an individualized orientation schedule.
Those are legitimate places to start.
But the scheduling problem can reveal something larger.
The institution may need to determine which sessions apply to which students. Some activities may be assigned. Others may involve choice. Different groups may move through the same program differently. Schedules may need to remain accurate when circumstances change.
The larger question becomes:
How do we help each student understand what they need to do and where they need to be?
How VZOS® supports personalized orientation scheduling
VZOS® is VisualZen’s Orientation Management Platform for colleges and universities.
Personalized scheduling can be one of the orientation responsibilities the platform supports.
Depending on the institution’s needs, VZOS® can support different student schedules, assigned and selected activities, groups, session information, schedule access, and changes that occur as a program is operated.
That can support summer orientation, Welcome Week, Weeks of Welcome, Family Weekend, and other institution-defined orientation and transition programs.
But an institution does not need to personalize every schedule.
And it does not need to use VZOS® for every part of orientation.
One institution may need the platform for a focused scheduling responsibility. Another may connect scheduling with registration, preparation, check-in and attendance, advising, communications, families, or other parts of its orientation operation.
The appropriate role depends on the work the institution has decided the platform should support.
Your program determines what should be personalized
There is no universal personalized orientation schedule.
For one institution, everyone may appropriately follow essentially the same program.
For another, students may need different schedules based on legitimate institutional differences.
Another may combine assigned activities with student choice.
And the right approach for summer orientation may be different from the one used during Welcome Week, Weeks of Welcome, or Family Weekend.
VisualZen’s role is not to decide how your institution should structure those experiences.
Our job is to understand how your program works, where different schedules matter, and where technology can appropriately support the work.
Your orientation model is yours. VZOS® can support the personalized scheduling responsibilities your institution has decided the platform should own.
