Introduction

When you come to UVic, you’re joining not only an institution, but a community. We are so excited to welcome you to our community, share with you all the things we love and help you settle in to life at UVic. – From the course home page

Before we really dove into all the things we wanted students to learn, we wanted to take a moment to introduce students to our community: who we are, what we stand for, what they can look forward to. We wanted to get students excited about coming to UVic. We also chose to introduce students to our physical campus in this topic, at the request of our students themselves.

This topic contains three different activities.

What defines the UVic community?

How do I navigate campus?

Think Forward | UVic values

By completing these activities, we hope that students will:

- Begin to feel like you belong to the UVic community
- Identify key features of UVic’s physical campus spaces
- Learn what supports and services are available
- Connect with UVic’s core values and reflect on ways that those could be enacted

What defines the UVic community?

In What defines the UVic community?, we introduce students to the UVic community. We emphasize that we are not just an institution, but a community, and share some facts about our community make-up. This topic is also where we “introduced” our behavioural expectations. I put the word introduced in quotation marks because we made a concerted effort not to tell students what they could and could not do; we know that’s the exact type of approach students rebel against. Instead, we chose to paint a picture of who we are as a community, and the values we collectively hold, hoping that students would choose, of their own accord, to uphold those values through their behaviour.

This activity is text-based content, and also makes use of icons and graphics to enhance visual appeal.

>> View the full What defines the UVic community? activity

What defines the UVic community?

Learning outcomes: Students who complete this activity will begin to:

Feel like they belong to the UVic community
Feel excited about coming to UVic

This activity also contains a video showcasing 10 different UVic students answering the question “why do you love UVic?” in one short sentence. While the link isn’t explicitly made in the video, each student’s answer links to one of UVic’s community values. Additionally, each student was filmed in a different location in order to showcase our campus. The Your Campus Community video is 1 minute long.

How do I navigate campus?

This activity introduces students to our physical campus, and was introduced in response to student feedback. By giving students the opportunity to click around a campus map, we introduce them to some of the physical features of our campus that help when trying to situate oneself, such as the ring road that encircles campus, the quad in the centre of campus, and the bus loop. Students can click on various buildings to learn what can be found inside; these explanations include descriptions of many of our campus services. Finally, this activity includes some campus navigation advice from upper-year students, as well as an overview of students’ favourite spots on campus for coffee, hanging out, studying, and more.

Learning outcomes: Students who complete this activity will begin to:

Identify key features of UVic’s physical campus spaces
Learn what supports and services are available

Complete the How do I navigate campus? activity. The activity will open in a new window. This activity works best on a laptop, desktop or tablet.

Think Forward | My UVic values

In this activity, we dive further into the five values of the UVic community that were introduced in What defines my community?, and explore some tangible ways that the UVic community brings those values to life. We also ask students to select two of the five values and explain how they plan to enact those values as they join the UVic community.