Once again, thanks to the efforts of Information Age Publishing, an out-of-print classic is available. Charles Wedemeyer's Learning at the Back Door: Reflections on Non-traditional Learning in the Lifespan has been reprinted. This book has a special place in my professional mind because, as a young associate professor, I reviewed it for Educational Technology in 1982. The book was unforgettable, but I hoped my review was forgotten. I panned Wedemeyer's classic.Here are two excerpts from that review:Recently, I reread Learning at the Back Door, as well as my decades-old review. Looking through the prism of experience rather than enthusiasm, I now see what a great and classic book Professor Wedemeyer offered us. I still had a hard time reading much of it. My fault, not his.
Michael Simonson (2010) studied this question.