The Experimental College

Last year, a leaflet informed me of the “experimental college” (EXCO) as a place where everyone can take or teach a class for free, a locale committed to open access to education (defined in the broadest sense of learning), and lifelong learning. More information is at http://www.excotc.org/. Since then, in the context of an EXCO, I have been thinking about how technology can (a) support the creation of an experimental type of college, (b) allow prospective students to gain a deep look into what prospective courses entail, (c) enable instructors to effectively convey the course content for prospective students, (d) spread the word about such an endeavor, (e) be used to eliminate inequalities arising due to limited access to education, (f) facilitate the development of a completely online (or a hybrid) model of an EXCO, and (g) proactively prevent the development of boring pageturning-kind of online learning.

I have talked to a friend about EXCO and we have jokingly mentioned the development of an EXCO in our country. This would be a huge endeavor, but I am at a bit of a loss – I don’t know where to start! I suppose, the best thing I could do is to start writing my ideas and talk to others about it. In this spirit, does anyone have any interest? Do you want to be involved? As you can see, everything is fluid at the moment. We could use anyone with any sort of expertise. Can you teach knitting (maybe online)? How about a beginning Instructional Design Course? Perhaps facilitate discussions on Harry Potter? Or perhaps you’d be interested in the design of an online learning environment (using opecourseware perhaps?) to facilitate the EXCO? Maybe you are interested in evaluation? Talk to us… let’s get a movement started! :)

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Update: This just came through: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/diy-education-teach-yourself.html