James Hare wrote:
Incredible ideas.
Another thing we could do is have people do the courses themselves,
without the teacher. The lessons (which are main namespace, remember)
would detail people to read certain pages and all that... if they had
questions, they could bring them up on the talk page. I've designed
the schools I've created so far to have a list of advisors that could
help people, so people can directly contact them. In addition to all
this, we could have an IRC channel reserved once a week so people can
speak live with advisors to ask questions.
We could hold this instead of the IRC classes, or, in addition to
these IRC classes. Some people just want to learn alone, and some
people want their education to be assisted by an educator. Their call.
I was thinking of calling at least some of when I would be using IRC as
"office hours"... when an "instructor" could give some one-on-one
tutoring for some tougher stuff, but no strict schedule or agenda. And
of course my individual talk page would always be available, as would
the course talk page.
One of the "cool" things about doing this as a wiki is that
(particularly with the week by week discussions) you would also have
archived discussions from previous "cycles" through the material, where
you could even read questions and replies from other students that are
now alumni.
Most of what I'm going to be doing should be in sufficient detail that
in theory some people could do without the formal instruction business
and be able to muddle through on their own, doing the "homework" and
completing the curriculum on their own schedule. At least that is what
will likely be a major goal. It will, of course, be easier if you have
several people who are all working on the same topics together at the
same time, but as you said that will be a preference, not a requirement.
--
Robert Scott Horning