“Proponents of Self-directed learning often hold antagonistic attitudes towards formal education systems…”
I lapse into this attitude frequently, perhaps because for me the contrast between my own self-directed learning and my formal learning has been so stark. The latter (an online graduate program) has been mostly frustrating, always expensive, and probably useless to me other than the credential. In the same three years I’ve been plugging away on it, I’ve been pursuing my own learning online — some of that pursuit is manifested by the writing I’ve done in my blog, but much of it was simply reading, commenting and reflecting on the thoughts of colleagues on the web. It feels more fruitful, almost free and applicable to real-world problems.

My experiences would indicate that the values you’ve stated for freedom of relationships should be reversed. When I’m in a course, I’m thrown together with 25 other people with different goals and approaches to the topic. Maybe it’s because I’m somewhat introverted, but I’ve found it very difficult to initiate and maintain relationships in online courses. In the network that has emerged around my blogging (reading, commenting, posting) there seems to be much more freedom — the potential networks includes anyone in the world who is interested in the same things you are. And unlike courses, where classmates scatter every four months, the online relationships I’ve made persist as long as the common interest is shared.