Dave, I think I understand the idea you give us about how communities really operate and totally agree with the idea of the course as a way to connect students with their own networks. I must say I am a little ashamed to recognize that I have not been able to remain in two of open courses I have taken so far. The last one was led by you and George. However, both were excellent experiences to create my own discussions locally and even (during the last course) to produce a new comparative view of technology use and understanding in two different educational settings (your country and mine). I did not share it because this was not the objective of the course; however I was able to raise interesting an discussion with my colleagues about why it has become so hard for third world countries like mine to adapt technology to our own needs. Here you will find a graphic of some of things we discussed: http://bit.ly/awKQlc.

But Dave, do not panic, I am not going to take this course. However, since you gave us the opportunity to comment on this blog, and I feel I already know you enough (virtually) I encouraged myself to share with you my impressions about open course experiences for us who live outside the US.

First of all I think they are the best thing that could be done to spread knowledge, create interesting discussions and even create new knowledge. I followed some of the discussions posted on the Education Futures course and I noticed that some people just did not get it because they needed more direction and orientation. That made me think that probably this is not yet a learning solution for everybody. Some people dropped the course because they felt lost, others remained because they liked the experience and developed some sort of commitment to the course and to learning, and others like me did not get to the end, but participated during the course and created our own educational discussions locally. But don´t take me wrong, this was a one of a kind experience for me, probably because I was not interested in getting credits for the course but in learning without external pressure. However, it seems that formal courses, need more balance between what students receive from the facilitator and what they give to the course. Probably, that kind of course needs more direction in the discussions so that what is negotiated at the beginning of the course really happens (even if at the end, students learn much more than you all expected). On the other hand, I don’t know if it could be a good idea asking the students to write a little (five to ten lines) about the virtual spaces they created outside the course in a central forum or via twitter, and keep people informed about what they are doing and their advances. Sometimes we want to have all the important information in one place and not having to navigate away from the course to know what others are doing. Just a thought, something you surely have already thought about.
Bye Dave.