As someone who has worked on online learning (the machine learning discipline), and who is young enough to have taken a few Coursera classes in high school, I m

As someone who has worked on online learning (the machine learning discipline), and who is young enough to have taken a few Coursera classes in high school, I must dispute your claim :) To me, "online learning" has nothing to do with classes on the internet. I still think of those as "MOOCs". I don't think it's a stretch to say that the author wasn't aware of the other usage, as I'm certainly not.