While we cannot prevent anyone from taking the course, we should not encourage the divorcing of theory and practice when we are in control of the situation. Without the hands-on, it would be like taking a course on how to fly an airplane without ever getting into the cockpit. We also need to take seriously the recommendation of monitoring mentors and somehow making them more accountable for their performance as a mentor. Some mentors did not perform well as shown by the evaluation of the Beginning Internet course. Poor mentoring could destroy much of what we are trying to achieve.
Feedback suggests that good mentoring is vital to the success of the whole endeavor.
A final important point to emerge is an old, but important one. Technical assistance is vitally important to the smooth running of the course and the mentoring process. We should never be tempted to over-extend ourselves and to offer more courses than we are able to provide technical support for.