Well, in a couple of cases (here is my current list of MOOCs I took part in, if anyone cares: http://pa-mar.net/Main/Study/Onlinecourses.html http://pa-mar.net/

Well, in a couple of cases (here is my current list of MOOCs I took part in, if anyone cares: http://pa-mar.net/Main/Study/Onlinecourses.html http://pa-mar.net/Main/Study/Onlinecourses.html) in order to get completion you had to submit a end-of-course project which was very interesting in itself, and you also learned a lot because in order to get it "graded" you had to grade at least 5 other projects randomly selected among the other participants. So you either saw different approaches to the same problem (e.g. Data Analysis) or everyone discussing a different problem (An Introduction to Operations Management). I am sure that I got a lot (in terms of learning) from that part of the course. If everyone just picks and chooses some papers/videos and drops out before the end you don't get anyone to grade your work and you have no other work to grade (and possibly learn from).