My dream of an open course – Bob Dylan MOOC

As people have become fond of mentioning, i have alot going on right now… and don’t have the time to take on another project. But I have a project in my head that i’d really, really like to try. I want to do a bob dylan open course.

My feelings about how knowledge gets created are strewn all around this blog, so i wont torture you with it. Suffice it to say that i think curriculum can come from membership in a network.

What i’d like to do is have an open course that ran for a period of time (in order to get people places, i think ‘eventedness’ is an important part of learning) lets say 12 weeks. Each week would have a theme, maybe we would wander through the different incarnations of dylan following along with the I’m not there film. Maybe through different concepts that keep recurring.

But imagine what this means about learning. It means that people with common interests come together to ‘learn’ stuff, consciously. You’d have some people who were new to dylan, looking for a way into understanding what all the fuss is about. Other folks who maybe have heard the canon and think maybe they’d like a little more. And then some other folks who might be a bit more engaged with the lyrics, the style… whatever.

A learning ‘community’ (i use this word lightly in this instance) with no other purpose but to come together and learn about something. No financial attachment, no credit, no asessment.

So.

Yes… so. The so is about scale. Think about this as 2000 people who came together to learn about dylan. Think about how these things get routed, how subsets get formed, how people splinter, other communities form that then go on existing passed the actual event.

I think the idea is really exciting… and I want to try it sometime. Just as a landscape to discuss how learning can happen if nothing else… not to mention all the great tunes.

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