My personal learning experience and what I see from my students (granted that be the nature of the program I am part of, highly kinesthetic in nature) is in opposition to what is being "taught" here. I prefer less "community building in courses. The more effort that I have to put into partiucipating in the "community buiulding" the less I enjoy and get from a course. When given an option of opting out of "community buiulding" in the learning envoronment, I see a vast majority of students opting out, they only participate at the minimum level required by the instructor and have expressed their dislike for it and note it, like it is for me, disruptive to their learning experience. The students do form thier own communities, but often times it is much smaller than an entire cohort and less frequent than is often prescribed and forced in online courses. I wonder where the data is that supports the directive to attempt to create these artificial senses of community? While it may be beneficial for some students or some areas of study, is it really as effective versus disruptive as we are being told?
