[visarga]

I believe what is missing from MOOCs is personal coaching. People do better when they are observed by other people than in a void. The educational coach doesn't need to be an expert in the domain, just an expert in education. Maybe MOOCs would do better to be coupled with local study groups and educational coaches that make recommendations about what to learn next and supervise the progress of the student.

[ghaff]

This is basically the idea with blended learning models. The problem though--or one of them--is that the MOOC component mostly tackles the easy (and relatively cheap), one-to-many broadcast part of the blend.

My understanding is that a lot of schools already videotape their big lectures and many students just watch them online while doing study groups, going to recitations, working on problem sets, etc. more or less like they always have.