Hi Eileen, I already asked posed this topic in the chat during last class, and I am already certain you are still in the "sorting-it-out" stages of how the flow of this fully online learning will go. But I wanted to elaborate on my concern where everyone could weigh in who may want to, in their own time, about students being identified. It seemed last week that our names were optional and many folks in the chat had the beginning of an email or other user login as their display names (someone else actually pointed out to me how to adust this so maybe people don't even know it's a choice). Additionally, since it seems like it's still a maybe whether we will be able to continue and ask questions live via zoom, I am wondering if it might be something you and David have considered and/or already discussed to: A- make it mandatory that people have at least their first name accurate in the chat and B- announcing who's asked a question when delivering them to David? Maybe for some people this feels unnecessary, but for me, who was hoping to be in-person, I feel a major sense of disconnection from both the other students as well as David and these two small adjustments may be some of the only ways we can "get to know each other's personalities". Of course we have our optional ways of connecting outside class which are great but, I can only speak for myself here, the small engagement of names feel like a big difference in other online courses I've participated in. Thank you kindly for everything you ALREADY do for this HUGE burden of wrangling this entire program together! Warmly, Dawn

Hi Dawn, We are still sorting things out, but I'm not sure that making first names mandatory would be a good option. I'd like to wait a bit and see where we land on that. Some people would prefer not to be too connected and we need to respect that as well. I think some time is needed to sort it through. Yes - we will continue to have students ask questions through zoom and I agree people should identify themselves in some way when asking. So we'll continue to work on that as we go along. We'll also be doing other zoom meetings like we did last Thursday. I will announce those as we get them scheduled. And, as I said last week, I will be announcing who's asking what question as much as possible when things calm down a bit. We also have a student to student forum, you have your own class facebook page I understand, and the zoom link that we used Thursday night is open to everyone at all times. If you'd like to maybe start a study group, etc., feel free to do so. You've got the student list with everyone's contact info. Hope that helps! Eileen