Great piece, great thoughts I'm glad you were able to get some good experiences out of the MOOCs that focused on more relevant, practical skills (startup engin

Great piece, great thoughts I'm glad you were able to get some good experiences out of the MOOCs that focused on more relevant, practical skills (startup engineering, technology entrepreneurship, etc.). I wish more faculty (teaching MOOCs or not) would try to make their course more relevant and applied rather than abstract and rote (there are tons of techniques like service learning, problem-based learning, etc.). "I also was able to deal with the independence due to everything being very task/goal oriented rather than just the instructor saying abstract concepts for us to somehow grasp from listening. It also had an extremely practical aspect to it, as by the end, one had to bootstrap a startup using all the skills learned, and so there was an incentive to spend extra time learning." I have a presentation on the Pros and Cons of MOOCs I'm giving tomorrow (I gave it 6 months ago, too), and I added a link to your post (on the slide about the perspective of non-matriculated/outside students): http://bit.ly/considermoocs http://bit.ly/considermoocs