Will Free Online Courses Ever Replace a College Education? - BENJAMIN WINTERHALTER, the Atlantic

An expanding body of research suggests that providing students with feedback in real-time has a big impact on how much they retain. And this just so happens to be something that MOOCs—and automated grading—do exceptionally well. As Mitros put it: “We have study after study suggesting that you learn very little as a result of me talking at you for an hour. Whereas if I convey information to you for five minutes and then assess you on it, and repeat that for an hour, you learn a lot more.” For the time being, MOOCs seem unlikely to take the place of physical campuses—or even replace for-profit universities, as Lue hopes they will. In order to do that, MOOCs would have to begin offering meaningful credits—the kind someone could take to a job interview and expect to have taken seriously. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/07/how-online-courses-are-becoming-educations-new-wave/375152/