Most campuses have a first year course that is designed in part to help students make the transition to college.  The University Survival topics under the Student Resources link can be very useful in such a course.  Outlined below are some suggestions for how you can integrate the US topics into such a course.

1. 1.   Each week give the students an assignment to read one of the topics and describe how they intend to use the topic.  In some weeks, you might have the students select a topic from a general section (e.g. Becoming a More Efficient Learner).  In other weeks, you might have students read a specific topic (e.g. Anticipating Test Questions Used before the first big round of tests.)
2. 2.   Exhibit 1 gives a sample of a generic response template you might want to use in conjunction with the assignment mentioned above.  It’s very useful to have student do these assignments on-line because their responses can be used as testimonials for future students.
3. 3.   In order to improve the quality of the responses, you might want to give students examples of what would be a good response and what would be an unacceptable response Exhibit 2 contains examples of theses.
4. 4.   The assignment primarily focuses on what students plan to do.  You might also want to follow up and see what they actually did.  One way to do this is to offer bonus points for testimonials that show students made a serious effort to apply the concepts.  Exhibit 3 contains a rubric for evaluating these testimonials.  Note the testimonial doesn’t have to report on a success as long as a serious effort was made and the student had a follow up plan for improvement.

One thing that often happens when students see the content available to them is that they will begin reading and using topics beyond what was assigned.  But it’s good to make an assignment every week from the topics to keep the topics in front of them. .