[crpatino]

Agreed, but I'd counter and say that a median virtual course tend to be better than a median physical one. The more advanced the course, the more this tend to be true.

Lecturers in a classroom, specially professors who's main goal is to research and are forced to teach, just come and blurt out whatever they think today session is about. I once had a class where the slides had scrambled egg over because the professor had been preparing the class over breakfast, with his baby boy on his lap!!! And I am not talking about an overworked postdoc, this was a guy with tenure. I imagine he though he was being brilliant by cramming together his parenting, contractual responsibilities to students and fulfillment of bodily needs into a single time slot so he would have more time for his oh-so-precious research.

When this kind of lecturer do some MOOC course, they become conscious there's going to be an audience and a record of their performance. So they devote at least as much effort to it as if they were writing a paper for some mid-tier congress. This has the double advantage of having them put an honest effort, and the delivery medium playing to their strengths. This shows in the end results.