Some ideas that have been swimming around and deserve more time to distill/ferment….

* Is the “massive” part really important? Why must an open course have hundreds, thousands to be valuable?

*it seems most of the example open courses are courses *about* open courses or edtech. I’m curious where the ones about history, art, math are (yes, Stephen did a logic one)

* As someone who has only peripherally participated, I am seeing a value judgement via the words “drop out” “people not staying in courses”. It seems to be using the mindset of a traditional course in what is being pitched as untraditional. What is wrong with choosing some minimal or micro level to be in an open course? Is the only way to get something out of such a course is to be an active over-achiever in the forums? Why am I a no good drop out if I choose to pick the parts that interest me and leave the rest? Is it open or not, cause I smell a wee bit of hypocrisy if the assumption is I have to have a high attendance rate in an open course.

Sure it makes sense that people doing this for official credit are going to have the extrinsic carrot motivation to be active. Frankly, I think a sign of a successful course might be ones where people who are not in it for credit have some staying power (if that is critical) or contribute a lot.