I thought of this thread when I came across this NPR piece about the slower than expected growth of MOOCs. Interesting study observations were that a large segment of users are existing teachers (particularly doing continuing ed -- those already considered well-educated), and students from other countries than the U.S., and that growth and acceptance seems to be limited by assessment and assessment security.
New Research Shows Free Online Courses Didn't Grow As Expected(Actual study link in text of link above)
HarvardX and MITx: Two Years of Open Online Courses (Study)(*Edited to fix html)
