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What I appreciate most about this course is the active use of Serendip in combination with the class, sometimes seeming as the bond holding the course together. The weekly posts allow for all to contribute to current discussions, even if not directly in the classroom setting. It's also nice to have this aspect because the class is on the larger side, and it provides a space to express comments and ideas that may not directly tie into where the class discussion was going and may not have seemed to fit otherwise but are still valuable comments. I also really appreciate the way in which Serendip comments are tied back into previous discussions. In other courses when posts, labs, etc are left just as assignments and not addressed further, the work and insight feels to have gone to waste since nothing is being done with it. But in this class there is a sense of everyone's input being valued since it is structured into the next lesson/discussion.

I think perhaps if more individuals were to respond to each other online it would make for more rich conversation since it wouldn't be a single idea put out there, but rather a developing conversation that were to elaborate. I think it would be interesting to have small groups online in which you could jump into conversation with as opposed to all being lone bloggers. For me personally, I appreciate the online version of communication better since I have greater difficulty making my way into class discussions, it also releases that added pressure of having to speak in class. 

Throughout the class I've been learning about evolution in various forms that I'd never considered. It's interesting adding the different twists in which it can be viewed with the different ways in which terms can be defined. One of the underlying messages I've taken away with me is that there are a vast amount of unanswerable questions, or at least that there are many possibilities as answers to each question. Discussions made things, such as ideas, have much more depth in the sense that everything already exists but at the same time we can "create" them. Usually when I left class I had tangled feelings of confusion with a small grasp on understanding that pulled itself upward to further understanding. It's one of those things where you have to put some of the things you've "learned" previously on pause in order to let your mind wrap around all that's being laid out before you. The majority of the time I felt it easier to have a handle on the matter at hand were I to place a metaphor alongside it which I was more comfortable with and understood more fully.

I'm interested in seeing how this second part of the course will develop. I'm not sure if to expect a sharp shift from worldly evolution to the evolution of literature. I am interested in seeing how the two evolutions are tied together.