I understand the skepticism! And students coming from our K-12 system have not typically been encouraged or allowed to do much in the way of free range learning.
But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much motivation increases when students have more responsibility for their learning and more flexibility about which topics and interests they pursue. I do give them some guidance — the rough parameters of the topic, or some suggested readings, and I point them at high value material they might not find on their own. But I try to leave the rest of it pretty open.
I use blogging in most of my courses these days, and have found that a bit of encouragement and genuine interest on my part, combined with feedback from peers makes for posts and F2F interactions that are richer and more interesting than what I used to experience with more traditional formats.

I understand the skepticism! And students coming from our K-12 system have not typically been encouraged or allowed to do much in the way of free range learning.
But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much motivation increases when students have more responsibility for their learning and more flexibility about which topics and interests they pursue. I do give them some guidance — the rough parameters of the topic, or some suggested readings, and I point them at high value material they might not find on their own. But I try to leave the rest of it pretty open.
I use blogging in most of my courses these days, and have found that a bit of encouragement and genuine interest on my part, combined with feedback from peers makes for posts and F2F interactions that are richer and more interesting than what I used to experience with more traditional formats.