Should I open my courses to wider audience or not? Why? Why not? This is question that arises every now and then.

I understand the idea of life-long learning and that I basically I could contribute to that as well by opening the doors. I understand that opening the doors could bring publicity and positive spirit to the university, school, department and maybe to me as well. I understand that by opening the doors I could share my work which is nice since it is always good to share something (good) that you have worked on. I also understand that once deciding to open the doors this might give an extra kick to improve my work. I understand that opening the doors might bring some constructive ideas from outside to improve my work and make it a part of a bigger picture. I understand that opening might give opportunities to network.

But these points do have their other sides as well. Does my course actually add anything to this so-called life-long learning which is more about (elderly) people learning to use mobile applications etc. than everyone filling their already narrow spare time by taking university level courses? Is my course just one drop in the sea of learning material? Is this just one desperate form of filling the basic need to be heard and seen? Does the opening cause extra stress of polishing and reviewing the content, especially in the case where I don’t have any extra time for this? Do I really want my dear work to be critically evaluated by an audience which might not have the correct background and context understanding? What if I get negative feedback? What is the so-called ‘potential network’ and is there any collaborators actually seeing my work (I think they are far too busy for this).

And finally: if I decide to open it, how I do it? What is the platform? How do I inform about my course? Do I open to everyone (the whole internet) or just to some restricted audience? How to do deal with GDPR? How I create contact/feedback channels if any? How are the copyright issues/ what CC license should I use.

Yes, many pros and cons and many questions. But I still think it is a slight yes for me (after some polishing).