Assessing progress

So far, the course design has not used any formal online assessment. We have encouraged peer interaction and peer-assessment of the avatar in a forum. We set up self-assessment through a choice activity. We set up a Moodle assignment with nothing to upload, which the teacher can use to enter scores for participation in offline activities.

The reasoning behind the design was to welcome people to this new course through an onboarding process. We have provided opportunities to build connections with other people in the course and build up their feeling of competence. They could use activities in a low-risk setting to build their confidence in using Moodle. In your course, you would do more of this, but this simplified demonstration shows that people are more likely to use Moodle activities if you set up a low-risk non-assessable mini version as a tutorial. If people can imagine an event, it reduces the anxiety and they are more likely to take a risk.

With this foundation in...