First impressions count. Your first chance to show your presence is when the course starts. You want to make sure everyone's logged in okay and have everything they need. In terms of planning, it’s useful to reserve a bit of time for learners to just understand the requirements and structure of the course.
The rest of this article has some example text or templates that you can paste into your own facilitation plan to save you time.
Contact those learners who are yet to login.
Hi,
I’m [Name], the facilitator for [Course name].
I can see you haven’t logged into [Course name] yet. We encourage our learners to login before the course starts so they can begin to find their way around the course. It also helps us ensure we resolve any access troubles before you need to start studying. If you’re having trouble logging in,
Go to [Insert link to your organisation’s login]
Enter your email [include any particulars about what email they’re likely to have signed up under e.g. student@orginisation.com]
Select Forgot password? Doing this will send a link to your email to reset your password. If you don’t get an email, check your junk mail.If you’re still having trouble contact [insert details of your first tier support e.g. your organisation’s helpdesk].
Hope to see you online soon.
Introduce yourself to the students in a talk channel
Tell learners a bit about you and what your role is - it’s okay if you repeat some of what you’ve got in your profile. After your introduction, encourage learners to introduce themselves too (for more guidance see Show the human using profiles and introductions).
I’m [Name], your facilitator for this course.
As your facilitator I’ll be sending out weekly messages to say what you should be completing, checking in on progress, marking key activities and assessment and giving you feedback for them, guiding our group discussions. But really I’m just here to help you learn and succeed.
I began my journey into [subject] with […]I bring with me my qualifications in [list qualifications]. Over the years I’ve [some insight you’ve gathered or particular skillset you’ve developed which supports your facilitation and understanding of this particular course]. So as you can see I [new/experienced] but I am particularly passionate about [subject/teaching] because [reason].
In my personal life I […]
As I mentioned above, I’m here to help. So, the best way to contact me is either through the talk channels or by email: [email]. I check these [time/days/frequency + include whether they should expect a response in a given time].
Explain what each of the talk channels is for
For example
Welcome to the Announcements channel. This channel is for facilitators to post important information – changes to due dates or resources, reminders about upcoming tasks or workshops etc.
And another example…
Welcome to the Queries channel. This channel is for learners to post any questions about the course – assessment clarification, trouble finding resources etc.
Remember, if you’ve got the question… other learners are probably wondering the same thing. For that reason, we really encourage you to post your questions into the channel rather than email. And if you know the answer to another learner’s question – please feel free to respond!
And one last example…
Welcome to the Group Task channel. This channel contains only your group members and is so you and your group can plan and discuss the group presentation due in week 7.
If it is important that learners don't miss out on talk channel posts or announcements you might want to guide them to subscribe to email updates