To understand the onboarding experience of new students at Algonquin College, we conducted a survey with 126 participants, narrowing our analysis to 99 first-year students for relevance. Among them, 52% were international and 48% domestic, offering a balanced perspective. Students primarily used the ACSIS platform (30%) for academic tasks like course registration and scheduling, while the main homepage and other services such as the bookstore or student clubs saw far less engagement. This indicates that students prioritize academic-related pages during onboarding and may lack awareness or access to non-academic tools.

Our findings revealed persistent challenges with both discoverability and usability across key platforms. ACSIS and HireAC were the most difficult to find and navigate, while 33% of respondents cited multiple logins as a major barrier to effective website use. Although over half of the students found information access easy, nearly one-third remained neutral, and 11% reported difficulty. Overall, most students rated their onboarding navigation experience as fair to good, highlighting a functional but unremarkable journey. These insights underscore the need for streamlined navigation, consistent design, and clearer access paths to improve the student onboarding experience.