Career Ed Lounge is embedded in over eighty professional development portals serving the career and technical education community. Performance Groups in the Lounge are integrated with related learning opportunities offered on these portals. With a few exceptions, Performance Groups are also publicly available to any member of the Lounge to maximize peer-to-peer learning and performance outcomes.
I very much agree with the thoughts on a first impressions impact over the entire course.
One of the things I do each term on the first day is hand out a list of personal goals for the students. I walk them though the goals and follow up the discussion with the fact that these are also my goals for the class. I suggest they post it on the fridge and explain that I will not ask them to consider a path which I would not also follow. For some of the students it's a challenge, for others it serves as a mental check… >>>