This sounds like a great idea.<p>The main complaint seems to be that courses get abandoned by the teachers. Given that everyone is just doing this for fun, it's completely understandable, but still an issue.<p>I wonder if this can be fixed by having more than one teacher to each course. This would not only halve the work each instructor has to do but would also provide additional motivation to stick to it. I know that I would be much more likely to keep on teaching a course if I knew somebody else was also invested in the projects--something like peer pressure, I guess.<p>Coincidentally, my CS department is doing this with real professors in some of the real courses and it's going really well. Having multiple instructors switch off and present topics in different ways is rather effective.<p>I certainly wouldn't mind teaching a course on something interesting that I know (a very narrow field, admittedly), especially if I had somebody else to teach with. Of course there are also questions about how much free time I will have this year :P.