How to use this site – Being First: Teaching First-Generation Learners

Welcome! We’re so glad you’re here. It’s great that you’re interested in creating and maintaining first-generation friendly courses. Even better, first-generation friendly courses benefit all learners.

This site is not meant to be a comprehensive list of best practices, but rather a list of suggestions that surfaced in our work. It’s also not meant to be used in any particular order; rather, we encourage you to select the themes that speak to you most and go from there.

Main Themes

Acknowledgement and Awareness Go a Long Way

Navigating College Can Be Confusing and Isolating

Uncertainty About Belonging Is Common

Course Structure and Instructor Responsiveness Matter

Please don’t feel as though you need to implement all of the strategies here at once! Teaching development is an iterative process, and your choice of strategies should align with your authentic self and the needs of your discipline.

We encourage you to visit this site once or twice a semester, as different strategies and information may be most useful to you at various times in the semester. You might visit the site, for example, as you are finalizing your syllabus before the semester begins, and then return as you reflect on how the semester has gone and what you might like to try next time. We also hope that you will spread the word and share this site with colleagues.

If you have questions about implementing any of these strategies, please contact the SAS teaching and learning team at teachinglearning@sas.rutgers.edu.