I’m a bit behind schedule in #rhizo14, so I’ll tackle a couple of topics at once.

When I saw Dave’s Week 5 video, I was immediately reminded of George Siemens and the 2008 version of Connectivism and Connected Knowledge. George, in 2008, wrote about how it was the connections to other people that were truly important to learning. Later it was even suggested that content was a McGuffin, there to bring people together more than as something inherently important.

This brings me back to something I may well have discussed before. The massive courses I’ve participated in that have worked well share an important characteristic. Most of the people in them are already somewhat versed in the topic. In that respect, they are more like upper-level seminars than introductory survey courses. Learners know enough to , at least to some extent, design their own learning path, and their peers know enough to be helpful when questions are asked. There are probably some examples of rhizomatic “seeding” in introductory courses, but they seem to be rare.

As to where to go from here. I think you may well end up with something that looks like one of the many special interest Internet forums, where a community coalesces around a subject and learns from each other.