This might seem an odd page to include in the description of the non-course, but I think it important to realize that some points of potential failure can be anticipated in advance. Whether those can be mitigated is one thing to consider. Of course, there will be other potential sources of failure that are difficult to anticipate now. Let's ignore those here and concentrate on those that we can anticipate. Since I'm an economist, I will categorized these possibilities as either insufficient demand or excess demand.
Insufficient Demand
- The marketing of the non-course is ineffective and doesn't reach those students who might be interested in participating in the non-course.
- Even with effective marketing, the non-course concept doesn't pique the interest of many students. It seems like a time suck with no clear benefit.
- Students are willing to give the non-course a try, but their early experiences are not good and they drop out soon after they started. There are few if any students with a lot of experience in the non-course.
I don't have mitigations for these issues off the top of my head, other than what I wrote on the Reading Habit page, that students should start with reading materials they fully expect to enjoy. But enjoying the reading doesn't mean they'll enjoy blogging about what they read. And, as I wrote on the Student Blogging page, getting comfortable with that will take a while. The best I can do is to caution patience at first.
Excess Demand
- In the context of the non-course, I am a congestible resource. I can read and respond to only so many blog posts each week and have time for only so many live chats. I don't know what those limits are now, but it should be easy to see that as there are more students in the non-course, there are fewer new students that I can take on. Excess demand occurs when there are still other students who want to take the non-course yet I'm operating at full capacity.
- If the excess demand occurs rapidly, those students who are told to try again later may very well get frustrated. If they broadcast their frustration, the news of the might get out. The non-course will then get a bad reputation and then will revert to an insufficient demand situation from which it can't rebound.
- Alternatively, students currently in the non-course may want some of their friends to get involved as well. If the friends can't get in, the current students might get frustrated. That too could hurt the reputation of the non-course.
Here one can imagine a couple of different mitigations, provided the excess demand doesn't come about too quickly. First, more experienced students in the non-course might find that they don't need response from me and indeed, they can learn from each other as well as help out less experienced students. This is one way the effort might scale up that I would hope can be managed and anticipated. An alternative is that some other instructor, retired or still working, volunteers time in the non-course to increase instructor capacity. I can imagine this happening for those still working who are interested in bringing non-course function to their own campus. So the volunteer effort would be a learning-by-doing preliminary step in that.
Between the two, I'd much rather have to deal with excess demand than with insufficient demand. Excess demand would indicate the concept itself has some merit. Insufficient demand, especially when the marketing has been good, suggests the idea should be shelved.
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