Select the name Jeffrey Sanders (in the top-right corner) and view My profile. Imagine this from a new learner's point of view. First impressions are very strong. Do you feel that you know Jeffrey Sanders from the image he chose? What information is missing from this page? The profile page in Moodle is an important way for learners to get to know each other and find out how to contact each other.

Select Edit profile from the administration block to make changes. The first activity that a new person needs to do, when they start a Moodle course, is to update their profile. It is not necessary to explain everything to the learners, but here are a few important things to demonstrate:

In the administration block, go to Messages. Ask learners to look for your current course in the contacts list. Ask them to send a welcome message to you explaining how they found out about this course and what they want to achieve. They should also send a brief welcome message to two other learners who have similar interests. Explain to them that they can create a "contacts list" and block anyone if necessary. You may wish to negotiate some boundaries around online communication and review your school's online etiquette and anti-bullying policies. Try this in "The Impressionists" course where you can find test users contacts for practice.

Taking the time to guide the learners through the creation and upload of an avatar is a crucial step towards making them feel welcome in this new environment and having some ownership. Watch how long children spend in dressing up their avatar in the games. It brings them joy and power to choose how they are...

Game designers use the activity loops of Motivations, Action, and Feedback. This holds people accountable for an action. Instead of just asking people to create and upload an avatar and hoping they would do it, you could incorporate this in a series of activities. Set up a forum and make a post to invite people to reply with a Hello message. Each person has to select another learner's name to view their profile, and then rate each other's avatars by rating the forum post out of 3. First, let them rate your avatar so that they know how this works.

This completes the activity loop as you have provided them with three things: motivation to participate, a clearly defined action, and peer-generated feedback.

Figure 2.5: Every action can be mapped to multiple motivations

To set up a forum in a Moodle course, you need to add an activity as follows:

You have control over moderating comments made on this forum. Although it is a risk to ask learners to rate each other's work, having negotiated the agreed online etiquette you will be surprised how motivating this is for your group. Like Facebook has aptly demonstrated, tapping in to our need for affiliation is a very powerful force. Your learners will be generally fair in their assessments of each other. Feedback from peers is experienced differently than feedback from a teacher. Try this—you will be surprised what a good vibe this will create! If you didn't attempt a face-to-face lesson because there might be behavior issues to address, you probably wouldn't be a teacher. In an online environment, there will be a few tricky situations to navigate. However, the potential benefits of setting up communication lines and collaboration make this worthwhile. Each event is a learning experience.