FOE Closure

Sent 3:05am NZST 3rd Feb 2013

Dear Nigel Robertson,

The reason that I have asked you to join groups is to make the discussions more manageable and to allow you to form networks with people in your own field and even with others not in your field. The idea was to create a world wide network of people who can help each other and to start building a world wide online learning community that will provide support and help.

For now, you can do the readings and submit your reaction to the readings to various assignments in Week 1 without having to post them to the Discussions first or to join groups if you do not want to. The hope that you would post your reactions to the group discussions first was to have you view other people's posts and start thinking about your own reactions and how they differ or are similar to others. It always interesting to find out how other people react to certain readings. I also wanted you to start thinking critically about not only the learning theories but also the various components of the online environment as this will start the foundation of your own online course.

We will delay Week 2 until we have resolved Week 1 issues and everyone is comfortable with Week 1. We will send out an announcement once we are ready to move forward. Many have provided great support and I thank you sincerely. With more than 41,000 students, there is no way of knowing if technology will be able to handle the sheer volume of hits on the servers. You are welcome to continue on this journey with me as my only intention is to help as many people as I can to better their lives. I hope we can all unite and move forward and help each other and learn about what technology cannot do and the reaction of people when technology does fail. You will face this in smaller degrees in the online courses that you will begin to create.

All the best,
Fatimah

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Sent 13:18 NZST 3rd Feb 2013

Dear Nigel Robertson,

We want all students to have the highest quality learning experience. For this reason, we are temporarily suspending the "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application" course in order to make improvements. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. We will inform you when the course will be reoffered.

Yours,
Fatimah