Seriously, what is wrong with putting up some nice readable-at-own-pace lecture material that is hyperlinked and indexed correctly so that I don't have to rewind videos if I missed something?
I generally agree with you though that having a SINGLE path through the course is too restrictive. It should be like in games: there is a main quest, but you can go on mini-quests on the side...
I think most of these problems can be overcome, although probably not by translating traditional instruction and educational ideas more or less directly to MOOCs, but by exploring new ways of instruction, teaching, studying, and learning. I fear, however, that this will not happen (soon, or at a large scale), and MOOCs will become the poor mans' only educational opportunity, creating an educational/learning divide between those who will have access to small-scale quality instruction and those that have only access to MOOCs.
For governments and schools MOOCs make it easy to implement 'education for all' while cutting costs. For example, I could imagine high schools to stop offering advanced placement classes or some subjects locally, but instead offering access to MOOCs on those topics with some local supervision by people not schooled (and payed) as teachers. Similarly, I could imagine the government giving free access to MOOCs to all, while, at the same time, cutting on general scholarships.
I was impressed. It was better than any other face-to-face uni courses I had done.
I liked the interaction with other students. There was a forum and a Facebook page where we helped each other. I liked getting study notes from other students and I liked guiding others in solving the problems.
A video was better than sitting in a lecture hall, suffering from information overload and unable to stop the lecturer. A video I could pause and take notes. I could rewind to hear something explained again.
It took about an hour to get through a 20 min video. Originally the videos had no text, but, following an outcry from the students, text was supplied. For me, notes would have been better: I could have listened to the video, using it to expand the notes.
What was wrong with the MOOC? A thousand and one things if you simply counted the number of pages in the Forum. - Video presentations are too dry. - The assessment doesn't match the videos. - Videos have to be supplemented with text. - The course description doesn't clearly explain what prior knowledge you need. The saying "You cannot please all the people all the time" springs to mind.
What are deal breakers for MOOC? Paul Graham believes that online learning will more easily cater for uni courses than school-based assessment. The block he says is the bureaucracy oversight that surrounds schools.
Why does this bureaucracy exist? To protect and nurture the family's greatest asset, the children. In advanced economies, with children no longer working beside their parents in the fields, schools are a means of ensuring one's children are safe and learning skills that will generate an income in the future.
As one teacher with grown-up children explained it to me: "Schools will always be necessary - with both parents working who is going to babysit/teach their little darlings?!"
Almost all Coursera's coursers have weekly deadlines. If you got busy for a couple of weeks during the course time you will fall behind. And the chances that you would get busy are quite high given that some of the courses last for more than three months.
My wife taught online for UoP. They used NNTP and a book. No video. No interactive games. It worked because it recognized that the sizzle was the degree. It worked because they weren't trying to sell it to established institutional interests - e.g. department heads and professors and administrators who want to make sure that streaming video can go on their CV.
Now, taken over time, these topics will form a natural chain, networking with my present interests and previous topics of study. I might move from studying 'neoliberalism' to 'Margaret Thatcher' to 'Ronald Reagan', and onwards.
As this example suggests, autodidacts will quite naturally get stuck in topic chains, studying subjects that share a particular outlook, an outlook they take an interest in (be that outlook political, economic, or otherwise).
As such, autodidacts will inevitably study a syllabus that reflects, supports, and reinforces their current inclinations. Or, put more pointedly, there is no obvious mechanism by which self-learners will come to grapple with divergent viewpoints or challenging disciplines.
There is cause for confusion here. I am not claiming that self-directed learners will consciously choose to ignore alternative perspectives, only that this pattern naturally results from the way an autodidact studies. If I start reading the work of some libertarian political thinker, the thinker's intellectual predecessors or successors is the next obvious topic of study. The starting point lays a train-track into similar material.
(Similar anxieties have been articulated by Eli Pariser about the social Web. Pariser argues that Google's powerful filtering algorithm—informed by previous searches—skims off content that challenges a searcher's current outlook in order to return better search results, meaning that users browse the Web within an intellectual bubble.)
Additionally, I do not argue that well-organised and broad-minded autodidacts cannot escape this trap. Only that it is difficult to do so. Firstly, this pattern usually takes place without the learner's awareness, meaning they cannot take remedial steps. And, secondly, it is easy to imagine a learner ceaselessly kicking divergent perspectives into the long grass; "I'll read one more liberal thinker before I crack open Hayek".
But, importantly, universities disrupt this pattern.
Unlike critics seem to believe, universities comprise more than a succession of uniform courses on bland topics. Instead, they are the pooling point for a generation of young people from disparate backgrounds with divergent politico-cultural perspectives.
This vibrant academic social fabric provides the natural environment for informed, critical dialogue and the exchange of ideas and opinions. And, it is through such exchanges that our ideas are challenged, deconstructed, and rebuilt.
Of course, I am liable to an accusation of idealism. Firstly, for believing that university is any more than a stopgap between high school and work for young people to drink, party, and have sex. Or, for believing truly socially mixed universities exist. I do not deny that second-rate party schools exist, nor that the West is diseased with economic inequality. But, these are not essential to the university system. And, I am optimistic that our governments are taking proactive steps to rectify both problems.
Taken together, I worry that self-directed learning lends itself to an arrogant self-belief in one's opinions and a lack of regard for the complexity and nuances of politico-cultural debates, and that the platform universities provide for open interaction between peoples of different socio-economic background has been largely ignored.
(Note: from an article I wrote way back when)