How is it possible or even conceivable that after decades of the "sage on the stage" that the EDCMOOC team could conceive that participants wouldn't want instruction? Watching the taped first hangout and hearing the discussion on the fact that participants want instruction left me wondering: The model of online teaching I was used to has three dimensions: teacher, content and social presence. All three of these items are needed to create a learning environment in the online course otherwise it seems that the learners are basically in a correspondence course.
I think it was Jenn who talked about the instructor and people wanting instruction. It seems to me that the learner takes a course in order to be guided in what are the gems we need to take on our journey. If we are confident in what we are learning would we want to do it by ourselves? Or is education social and while we want peers but we also want the expert to guide our journey.
