Before the first class......

Encourage students to post personal biographies.

Encourage students to take the online course tutorial. (Give them an incentive such as points towards the first assessment grade. It may save you lots of time online doing tech support for your students.)

Self-Test to Preparing for Online Instruction
Orientation - Metro Online
E-Jones System Tutorial

Pose questions and have students post responses to the forum. For example....

What problems would you like to tackle during this course?
What kinds of things have you heard about this course?
What concerns should we deal with?

Give them a teaser. Post a recent event or example that will peak interest in the course material.