Current Interventions for the Digital Onboarding of First-Year Students in Higher Education Institutions: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Every year, students around the globe embark upon their higher education journey, making the onboarding of these students a critical task for colleges and universities. Combined with the growth in distance learning and the rapid development in technologies, the onboarding process occurs increasingly in the digital setting. For this reason, the objective of this scoping review was to report and map interventions, which are used in digital onboarding of first-year students in higher education institutions and explore the digital settings that characterized these interventions. The PRISMA-ScR Guidelines and the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis guided this investigation, which included researching four databases and screening the resulting titles and abstracts to identify the 17 sources of evidence included in the final analysis. According to our results, digital and virtual onboarding interventions were categorized into four onboarding dimensions: information interventions, socialization interventions, counseling interventions, and self-study interventions. Examples of the purposes and outcomes of these onboarding interventions included the transfer of information and the socialization of incoming students. Of the five onboarding settings that were also identified in the categorization, telecommunication software and virtual environments predominated. An independently developed onboarding tool could combine the identified onboarding settings and dimensions in the future.

Crossing the distance: University student newcomer socialization in online semesters—a case study

“…To help improve the "first-year experience" and, in turn, support student performance, we recommend extracurricular socialization training and digitally supported onboarding activities targeting the relationship part of organization, such as livestreams with interactive group chat (Robbins et al 2009;Schilling et al 2022). According to our analysis, course dropout can be explained in significant part by the organizational component of socialization which refers to rules and norms specific for the course.…”

“…Therefore, newcomer support in higher education usually takes place mainly in the first year of study, also framed as first-year experience programs (e.g. Habley and McClanahan 2004;Robbins et al 2009;Geertshuis et al 2014;Schilling et al 2022). In these programs, all components of socialization are present to a certain extent: information and socialization interventions help familiarize students with their learning responsibilities (role), get to know other students (relationships) and learn organizational norms (organization).…”

“…There are benefits and drawbacks of an online education environment. In online learning, many aspects of the role and organization, such as the distribution of materials, class schedules, and academic expectations, can be effectively communicated and managed through online platforms, events, virtual orientations, and coaching sessions (Schilling et al 2022). This may enable students to learn the two domains of their role and the organization.…”

“…From a psychological perspective, student socialization in higher education is a process within an individual (Morawski 2014) and typically involves learning and adopting academic and institutional norms, becoming integrated into the new social environment, and developing appropriate responses to emotional challenges (Bean 1985;Baker and Siryk 1984;Weidman 2020). To support socialization in higher education, most higher education institutions offer onboarding activities early on during the transition, for example by providing opportunities for newcomers to get in contact with peers and the new learning environment and/or by providing newcomers with essential information about the institution and effective ways of learning (Schilling et al 2022). Most of these onboarding activities take place at the very beginning of study programmes and are meant to give students a head start in their socialization process, while their long-term socialization is expected to develop organically.…”

“…Several onboarding activities (e.g. welcome events to provide initial information and give opportunities for students to mingle and get to know each other) may have existed in online or hybrid forms even before the shift to emergency online-teaching (Schilling et al 2022). These could relatively easily be transferred to an online version.…”