This idea is that PerlMonks could have online courses. Either by itself or in partnership with someone who does online courses, PerlMonks would organize classes, with qualified teachers, and registered students. The students would pay full fees like they would for any other course. The teacher would be paid out of those fees, again like any other course.

The lectures would take the form of a series of posts to PerlMonks. Homework exercises would probably also be online. People would be free to study these at their leisure.

However if you registered, you would be able to get help on the material, you could complete homework, get it graded and returned with comments, and at the end you would be able to take a test and have some official recognition that you had covered that material.

Details would definitely need to be worked out. (I am not even very sure whether or not it would work.) However it could be one way to build up useful learning material that is a little (OK, a lot) different than the usual discussion on the site.

Thoughts?