[munin]

speaking from some experience in putting together and running a mooc class (as well as non-mooc classes), they are very watered down versions of their original courses. after a lot of soul-searching, I think that the world is better for having these classes, but I can't imagine how they could replace or supplant the previous model. from my perspective, the things that add the most value to a college class, in educational value, inherently do not scale.

[tzs]

You can do a MOOC with very little watering down. Yaser Abu-Mostafa's "Learning From Data" from Caltech in an example. Here's an article written by Abu-Mostafa about this [1].

[1] https://www.class-central.com/report/caltech-mooc-flipped-cl...

[osoba]

The one big positive side to MOOCs is that they offer breadth (even if it's somewhat watered down). My own real life academic curriculum is 90% pure math, with programming and theoretical physics covering the other 10%, and having a wide range of interesting and diverse MOOCs lets you see what else is out there :)

[munin]

true! because the lectures are delivered asynchronously you can survey a broad amount of material. again, I definitely think that the world is a better place for having available courseware, but you shouldn't let the brand name of the professors institution (harvard, MIT, stanford, etc) fool you - it is still watered down. it has to be.