So Long, Farewell...

As the days of CI597C come to an end, I started to think about our community that has been created over the last several weeks. For some of us, I think that the end of class could evoke some strong feelings. For others, the impact could be quite a different experience. I'm thinking that the strength of emotions parallels engagement in a community - the more engaged, the greater the feeling of belonging, the stronger the feelings are towards the community, and when the community changes or disintegrates, the greater the emotional feelings. Our physical meeting space will exist no more, but for some of us, the virtual component of the class will provide a forum for conversation and potential sustainability for some of our community. It will be interesting to see how the CI597C community evolves over time. Many of us have discussed the need for face-to-face contact at some point. A completely virtual environment would not be ideal for a course (for some of us). I wonder what the rules will be for our virtual community. Since this component has largely existed online, without the support of the physical contact, what will the impact be on our online environment?