No Tuition & No Course Credit

The non-course is offered free of charge to students, with the exception that some reading materials may need to be purchased if they can't be obtained freely online or from a Library that the student has access to.  

I am retired and have a comfortable retirement income.  So I'm offering the non-course entirely as a volunteer activity on my part.  And even though I retired from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the non-course is my own effort, not sanctioned by the university. So the non-course can't offer course credit.  I view that as a feature, not a bug.  

Given that, there will be no grades and I don't envision student performance in the non-course to serve as a credential for the student in any subsequent endeavor.  The sole beneficiary of the student performance will be the student.  My goal with this is to see if the approach can tap into student intrinsic motivation.  If that succeeds, students will continue with the non-course for their own benefit.  If it fails, I hope the first time that happens the student will persist to try again, for a second and maybe a third time. But if no intrinsic motivation seems to emerge by that point, the student should leave the non-course.  What possible reason could there be for continuing?

Professor Arvan

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