B. At the Beginning of the Course: Getting Started

Examples of instructor activities:

• Send a ‘Welcome to the course’ communication to the students by email, news, or discussion board. This message should be welcoming and set a tone.
• Provide an activity, such as a discussion forum, for students to introduce themselves and to get to know each other.
• Follow through with student management (who’s in, who’s out, follow up).
• As needed, set up student groups for projects.
• Send messages or set calendar or news items for things like times for group discussion forums, assignment due dates, exam dates and times.
• Create a Getting Started/How to do this course module
• Use News for information
• Have your students post a greeting, introduction, goals, in a forum
• Learn about your students using a survey in the Survey tool
• Post a welcome message of yourself, text, picture, audio, video, to help them get a sense of you
• Use the Calendar for upcoming scheduled sessions and assignment due dates
• Get to know your learners by asking them specific questions in a survey or to send to you by email. Ask them about their background and context to help you tailor the course as feasible.