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Based on my experience, apart from a handful (really a handful) of open courses by elite universities (e.g. Harvard's Stats 110), the vast majority of online courses are garbage - low quality of content, insufficient coverage of the material, inappropriate format, bad teaching. I'm talking about almost anything on Coursera/Udacity/Udemy. Even if the courses were good, you still need to spend a good amount of time with a textbook and practice the subject. And considering that most courses are useless, you're usually better off skipping them altogether and getting straight to the book + practice approach to learning.

[adem]

> Even if the courses were good, you still need to spend a good amount of time with a textbook and practice the subject.

I don't understand why anyone would expect otherwise? This is as close to the university experience as it can get.

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People fall into the trap of expecting otherwise, because otherwise is easier. MOOC are often used as a shortcut rather than a legitimate way to learn about a subject.