What Massive Online Courses Do Well, and Where They Falter - Businessweek

Excerpt from a MOOC reality check

"Here’s what we have learned. Perhaps the chief benefit of MOOCs is simply the visibility it provides to help reach new customers, untethered from geographic restrictions. While enrolling in these online classes through Coursera involves less of a commitment than enrolling in (and paying for) an on-campus course, we have had more than 20 times more students sign up for our online courses than are taking classes in person. Of our 200,000-plus virtual enrollees, who hail from 150 different countries, 44 percent never heard of us, while another 52 percent had, but that was the extent of their connection to us.
Enrollment in a MOOC is not equivalent to taking a traditional on-campus course. It is more analogous to bookmarking a Web page."

What Massive Online Courses Do Well, and Where They Falter - Businessweek