[jrbeal]

I'd be fine with a video-less MOOC. Just give me a textbook and tell me the chapters to study and what assignments to work on, and I'll be fine. It's difficult to do this on your own because you never know what to focus on without guidance. You're likely to waste valuable time down some unimportant or meaningless rabbit hole! Of course, I'd hope the MOOC would offer a support mechanism in case I needed help.

[freehunter]

I was recently re-reading a textbook that I had in college and I realized just how much of the book we skipped in class when I noticed how many chapters were unfamiliar to me. I remembered how much we skipped around to put things in a more logical order and what questions we skipped in the tests as well... not sure why textbooks are often written to illogically that it takes a teacher to decipher them.

[fenfennek]

I think Tim Ferris commented on this problem once in a Google Talk where the topic of the quality of (text)books came up:

To a big part it comes down to the fact that ideas and chapters presented in books are most often structured and sequenced in a way that suits the author in writing it. Less about what would actually be the best way of presenting the material from a learner's perspective.