[cblades]

You didn't claim they weren't, but I just want to point out how each of those points is very, very subjective. For me:

- I'd much rather be in-person, where I can better gauge what others are communicating and more readily have two-way communication about the material.

- I'm way less focused when on my own computer, on my own time.

- I find I communicate way less purely online than I would in-person.

- Automatic grading sucks, especially for programming, as it can only really test inputs and outputs, and misses a ton of nuance. I want to also know if my code sucks, regardless of it producing the correct output or not.

[ghaff]

The main thing MOOCs do well is a solved problem with or without MOOCs--namely lecture videos.

Discussion boards are mostly a tire fire; they're mostly useful for dealing with platform problems. They can probably be better when you restrict access to a qualified class but they don't really scale.

>Automatic grading sucks, especially for programming

I'd probably say automatic grading sucks, "even for programming." At least automatic grading can evaluate outputs of non-trivial programs. Programming is one of the few areas where autograding works for non-trivial, not multiple choice, questions.

[agumonkey]

I concur with boards being useless in general. It's too slow, not predictable. That's why I liked the moocs IRC channels. It was a live place where we could discuss things and resolves issues quickly.