Engaging students in your course the FIRST time they login is critical to the success of an online course. The use of a Scavenger Hunt is a great tool to help students engage with your course, discover where key components of your course are located and learn to navigate the online learning management system. When planning your Scavenger Hunt questions, have a question that requires students to visit every possible component of your course. These include the assignments page, help resources, news, the discussion area, the assignment submission dropbox, grades and other pages you may have in your course. I end the Scavenger Hunt by asking students to post a personal mail message to me through the online course email. That ensures that they know how to retrieve and send emails through the course. Here’s an example Scavenger Hunt:
On-line Scavenger Hunt
The purpose of this activity is to introduce you to the many resources and tools available on course through D2L. Please complete the following and save it as a word processor file and submit the file in the DropBox by Sunday, midnight.
Have fun!
1. From the Introductions on the Discussion page, who refers to me by my real name?
2. Where did you find the weekly assignments and the Help Pages?
3. What is my phone number and where did you find that information?
4. What is the grade range for an A?
5. What can you do to avoid a late penalty?
6. Where will you find your grades posted for the class?
7. Where did you find resources to guide your writing for the course?
8. Who is the author of the texts for the course?
9. What is the minimum time you are to spend on the My Inquiry Investigation?
10. Drop me a message on the D2L MAIL system telling me you have completed the Scavenger Hunt.
The Message Alerts envelope icon at the top right side of the menu bar. It looks like this:
Choose Go To Mail to send mail and read mail you have received.
