Most of my free time these days is spent watching Coursera videos. It is an absolute revolution for those of us who love to learn. There is so much material though and I don't have enough time!
I wonder how much longer these services are going to stay free. I like to download all the content just to be sure that it's not taken away when they eventually go to paid models.
I also download everything. I'd hate to want to reference a lecture later only to find it missing.
Last I heard, Coursera was still searching to find a revenue model. I've noticed their "resume" section expand, and you can now opt in (or is it out, by default?) to job hunter searches. Which makes me curious as to what Coursera's revenue-generating product is going to be. Is it the database of people with certified(-ish) skills, or will it be the content they provide?
I bet the end goal (for all these MOOCS) is to become the de facto source for web based courses offered, for pay, through the current university system. You're right, they're also trying to become a recruitment tool for various industries, but they'll make the most money by switching on the revenue steam once universities become dependent on them and there's no turning back.
I've been thinking that a viable model that would keep courses free might be to use a kickstarter crowdfunding model to launch a course offering. If I did it, I'd set it up so that the threshold was high enough to make sure that the course was profitable, then make the course available to contributors first (and they'd get certificates), after which it would be freely available to anybody who wants to take it. You'd have to work out how to do the advertising efficiently so that it didn't eat your time and profits, which is probably a huge problem with the idea. Personally, I'd happily contribute to something like that on a regular basis though.
Periodic relaunches could also be set up for certificate track stuff. You'd get the professor back in to answer questions and all that, but the video content could be left the same so it should be much less expensive to operate existing courses.
On the practical side, once you download the videos, I can heartily recommend the SwiftPlayer iOS app — it lets you vary the speed at which the videos play, which is very practical for lectures. I watch easier sections (or ones that I just want to repeat) at 1.5-2.0x, going down to 1.25x or 1.0x when things get tougher. Easy FF/RW in 10 or 30-second increments and bookmarking are very useful as well.
I got so used to SwiftPlayer that I can't bear to watch lecture videos in the web browser anymore.
Is this just me or do others really find video superior?
1) Join the HTML5 trial http://www.youtube.com/html5
2) Open Chrome inspector, select the <video> element
3) In the Chrome console, type $0.playbackRate = 2.0 ($0 refers to the element you've selected in the inspector)
This also works for other sites that use the HTML5 video element, and allows you to go faster than 2x if you prefer.
YouTube's HTML5 interface also has a menu option (gear icon) which has a speed control, but the Chrome inspector trick works with any HTML5 site.
It's those "aha" moments where someone with a deep knowledge of the material clears up some misconception I've had for decades with a few sentences, or an off the cuff remark.
I've noticed this before MOOCs, actually. Take web development tutorials, for instance. A few colleagues of mine loved video tutorials from (e.g) lynda.com; I found it utterly boring and inefficient.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/...
The common one I've seen referenced is the VARK model: Visual, Auditory, Read/write, Kinetic[0]. Though as that wiki page states, there are several other theories.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles#Neil_Fleming.27...