Afsaneh Sharif

Paul,

The program was cohort and the online community existed within/through courses. Same as you, I?d be willing to pay a fee to continue to have access to that community and resources, but not sure for how long.

My knowledge regarding ?water cooler? is limited, but as long as participants? ?self identity?, ?social identity? and ?social relations? are formed in a shared space and ideas are exchanged, I would call it a community.

I also think the ?nomadic way? we migrate from community to community is influenced and affected by norms in communities, the way loyalty is established, good leadership as well as our roles in the communities. How many communities can we simultaneously be ?active? in? The answer depends on our needs, time and knowledge.

I think the growth and longevity of a community is directly related to the community meeting the needs of its members. If there are no longer shared needs, there is no reason for the longevity of the community.

Let me explain this from my perspective (recently graduated from UBC online Master program). At the end of the program, I started to panic about losing the community and my resources. A group of us worked hard to establish a place/forum so that we could continue our discussion and hold to our community, but after a while we started getting pulled into other ?communities? that relate to our new career, educational, or personal needs.

The community that we created is not active anymore. Did we really need an on-going community? Could an alumni community work? How could we promote participation, and establish loyalty? (I am still determining if there is a need) Therefore, at the end of a course/program longevity of the community may not be the answer/aim.

Do we want to keep all the communities of learning going on forever? How long do we want graduates from 70?s and 80?s to linger on our campus? Do we want all students/graduates to remain active in our community forever? While I am in contact with some of my classmates, and miss the whole ?community?, I am moving to other communities such as this one. I wonder how long this community is going to last!

Afsaneh