Day 11: yep, so-called Recent Activity is broken

After posting my interpretation essay last night, I was really curious if that would cause my Recent Activity to refresh, but it did not. So, I have to conclude that the Recent Activity is just broken. That would be bad enough, and in the absence of any notification system, it is a disaster. You cannot get notifications to stay in touch with people who comment or reply to you, and you cannot even get in touch with people yourself by bookmarking profiles and looking at people's Recent Activity stream. That makes the prospects of carrying on with the social aspects of this class pretty grim.

I don't know if Recent Activity is supposed to include comments and replies, but in the absence of any other notification system, it sure seems logical that comments and replies would be displayed there. Yet even if comments and replies are omitted, I have submitted 7 different assignments for this class, plus an Introduction post. Of those submissions, 2 involved creating a new discussion, and 6 involved adding a comment to an existing discussion created by the instructor. Only one of those submissions shows up in my recent activity, and it is not the most recent; it is an assignment from January 19. Since January 19, I have created one new discussion and posted comments in two existing discussions (along with all the comments and replies I have made to other people's submissions).

So, here's where things stand — No notifications. Recent Activity stream is broken. At this point, I don't know what to do. I cannot understand how we are supposed to make this into a social learning experience if the software is not designed to promote our interaction.

Here is my so-called Recent Activity; screenshot taken this morning, January 24, showing a last activity date of January 19. Conclusion: Recent Activity is broken.