Visvanath Ratnaweera

Moodle was constructed in a time when teachers were the bosses in the class. That is why the teacher role has so much power.

The times have changed!

You're welcome. I don't know much about the various enrollment methods in Moodle, just some guess work. ;)

To begin, I don't know what a micro-credential course is. But what I understood from the background, the users are uploaded and enrolled by the office, without the students doing anything. Then my suggestion won't work.

You want to catch the moment, when a user shows engagement by taking the first step. Yeah, forum and hundreds of other "break the ice" games are always a possibility. But they are neither automated nor generate useful reports for later.

Alternatively, you can restrict all the activities in the course bar one. That one opens the door to the whole chain. Let's say that is an Assignment, which accepts just text. So the student has to write something, anything, and submit to open the door to the course. The Assignment tool can also be set to send a mail notification to the teacher(s) at submission. Additionally, anytime you can get a simple report from the tool when the users have submitted the text first time. You can restrict the Assignment to one attempt.

How are the students enrolled in to the course? Usually "a new student accessing a Moodle course for the first time" is the enrollment. At enrollment Moodle sends a welcome message to the student. Maybe there's a way of triggering a message to the teachers too. Then what you need is a self-enrollment method - the simplest being the enrollment key method.