The start of EDCMOOC was hard to pin down, and it’s clear it will not end simply, either. There is still so much to do, and so much to say.
Online endings are something we have experience with, and something I am very interested in from a research and a teaching point of view. Online departures do not always seem like departures, if the members of an online group or an event are still where they were, materially connected to the same devices, in the same geographical locations, with ongoing links to one another. For that reason, I think those endings have to be handled with care to ensure that they can be experienced as sad, relieving, exhilarating, proud, transitional, or however else they may be felt. There has to be some kind of deliberate marker of an ending, to give people permission to go. (which doesn’t mean they won’t come back together in new ways.)
So, while I have every enthusiasm for the ideas people are sharing about how to stay in touch, how to keep the work of EDCMOOC going, how to sustain and grow the network, I also believe that these things have to have a purpose and a driving force that is post-EDCMOOC.
Having said all that, I am more than content to appreciate what unfolds next, whether or not I see it as departure-like. But if others find this idea interesting, some questions might be: what work do you want to do next? What project can you start, what event can you plan, what course can you develop? What should your EDCMOOC become?
The answer will be different for different groups and individuals as you move on from this (partly) shared experience, which is as it should be. I hope that people will keep using the tag where relevant, sometimes, as a marker that ‘EDCMOOC was here’. But EDCMOOC itself is a happening, and happenings are of a time. They are openings, made to be passed through.
References:
Kazmer, M. (2007). Beyond C U L8R: disengaging from online social worlds. New Media & Society 9(1); 111-138.
Teaching 'E-learning and Digital Cultures' 
loved the second life graduation ceremnony!
thanks! It’s such a great occasion, for graduates and staff. Often graduates tell us they’re at their computers with their families around them, watching too. It’s all very moving.
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no question this thingy ain’t over, even if it just becomes an insignia… for very many of us though edcm will take on new creative life through writing and other representations, as we come to recognise its ‘learning outcomes’ in our changing practices, and the ‘artyfact’ as just their narrative device – mooc mortuus est, vivat mooc!
Yeah, an insignia – that makes complete sense. Love it, Emily!