Bonding Online

In the readings this week, I particularly liked Dianne Conrad's "Building and Maintaining Community in Cohort-Based Online Learning." I appreciated the perspective it gave on the course of learning that we are in through the Instructional Design program here at UMass. In her study, it is clear that the face-to-face experience is important to building community although there are many aspects to the virtual community that created a bond in a different way. The ties were stronger for the group that she studied for those who early on worked together face-to-face. I actually had a reverse experience. I knew one of my 602 classmates from a previous course: 605. We never worked together, but we read each other's blogs, saw each others' works and viewed each others' final projects. We knew each other only by name and when we recognized each others' names, there was an immediate bond. Now that bond has been reinforced this semester as we have worked together and I imagine that we will gravitate to working together again if we are both in an online class in the next few semesters. I definitely will feel comfortable emailing her with any question that I may have about the classes that I am taking. So I definitely understand now how a community of practice can be built even in an online setting.