Nick: re bringing people together as an important part of academic life, I couldn't agree more, especially undergraduate.
I did take a (*very* tough) grad course at UNM remotely. There were two ways to attend remotely: Going to SFCC and using a specially wired room so I could ask questions, or simply my computer that evening .. no interaction but easy to repeat parts of the class that were elusive. We (the students) actually did have a personal aspect .. we used skype and google groups. And this really worked well. But being at the grad level, it was pretty much business like. I did go to one class just to meet and greet. I also attended Office Hours via Skype. MOOCs are doing better than that, and are accelerating due to the convergence of administrative and "social" software, as well as the actual MOOC-ware itself. So I'd guess MOOCs will best succeed in grad level classes, and even more for professional education. You'll see LinkedIn members posting their classes and proof of completion. I've taken an entire MOOC, coursera's first offering, Machine Learning. I've also scanned a few others .. Scott Page's Model Thinking was surprisingly good for being so broad. This stuff really is useful. -- Owen
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