From: First-Year Experience
Date: July 6
Subject: Sign Up for Your FYE!


Get Ready for Your First-Year Experience!

We all know that moving from home to campus and adjusting to college-level classes is a major life transition, and the First-Year Experience team are here to support you throughout this process! To help you learn about living at Colby, navigate your academic responsibilities, and build community, all members of the Class of 2030 will complete a First-Year Experience (FYE) during your first semester on campus.  

What is the First-Year Experience (FYE)?

The FYE is an educational experience for all Colby first-year students. FYE meets in-person with a small cohort of 10-15 other first-year students led by a staff facilitator and student leader. This pair of staff and student co-facilitators will facilitate discussions and activities focused on building essential academic skills, wellness practices, social connections, and understanding of Colby resources. 

These in-person meetings will occur every other week during your first semester, for five total sessions. In between these in-person meetings, during the alternate weeks, you and your peers will attend campus events or programs of your choosing, with guidance from your cohort’s student leader about happenings on campus and how they could fulfill FYE requirements.  

Completing the FYE requirement will involve participating in all 5 in-person meetings and attending at least 5 campus events during the respective weeks throughout the Fall Semester.  For each campus event or program you attend, you will be asked to submit a short reflection on what you learned. 

  • 5 In-Person Meetings: Scheduled sessions with your FYE cohort every other week, led by your staff and student co-facilitators. 

  • 5 Campus Events & Reflections: During the alternate weeks, when you are not meeting in-person with your FYE cohort, you will choose an educational event to attend on campus. For each event, you will submit a short reflection.

    • 10 Total Weeks of FYE

FYE is a graduation requirement for all Colby students, and completing FYE will help ease your adjustment to college life with peer mentorship and staff support, critical information, and resources essential to thriving at Colby.  See the sidebar to the right for how to choose your preferred FYE meeting time!

Complete the AI Literacy Module

Recognizing that artificial intelligence (AI) is a widely discussed and increasingly accessible technology that you are encountering in your academic and professional lives, Colby has created a critical AI Literacy module for incoming students.  

The primary goals of this online learning module are to help you understand that faculty establish course-specific expectations regarding AI, and that AI may be prohibited, limited, or permitted depending on the course. The resource also emphasizes critical reflection on AI, encouraging you to consider how AI may affect your learning, skill development, ability to think independently, and broader issues around ethics of AI use and misuse.  

The learning module is hosted on Colby’s online learning platform, Moodle, and is required for all incoming first-year students to complete by September 3rd.  You should have received an email notification that enrolled you automically into the AI Module on Moodle.  

The resource consists of seven short sections and takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

The sections are:

  1. Introduction and Pre-Assessment

  2. What is Generative AI?

  3. AI and Learning: The Challenges

  4. Ethical Considerations

  5. AI Tools Available at Colby

  6. Colby Policies on AI

  7. Key Takeaways and Resources

Each section includes a short reflective quiz designed to reinforce key concepts and encourage you to think critically about the material. 

We hope this resource serves as a useful starting point for you to navigate AI thoughtfully, ethically, and responsibly in accordance with the expectations faculty establish for their courses. 

To access the module, log into your Moodle Dashboard, navigate to Course Overview, and select the dedicated "AI Literacy At Colby" category filter.

  • For Technical Troubleshooting (e.g., access issues, video loading errors): contact moodle@colby.edu.

  • For Module & Content Questions: Inquiries should be directed to aiquestions@colby.edu


 

Sign Up for Your Preferred FYE Meeting Time!

To ensure we can enroll you into your preferred small cohort for the 5 in-person FYE meetings with a schedule that works with your classes and other commitments, we need you to complete this availability survey. Please indicate ALL the times that could possibly work with your weekly schedule this Fall. We need to know ALL the potential options in order to build a workable FYE meeting schedule for the entire first-year class. Thanks for helping us make this work!

Please complete this scheduling survey by July 17th. You can also click the button below.  If you do not complete the availability survey, we will assign an FYE meeting time for you (based on your current class schedule).

For more info, visit the FYE Website!