He is very unprofessional to drop out after 5 weeks. He just wasted the time of thousands of serious students who were really counting on him. Most of all, he gave Coursera and his university in a bad light because he couldn’t handle it emotionally. Very unprofessional.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, teach for the sake of spreading new useful information, and don’t be stubborn about achieving the maximum of learning, instead just concentrate on learning. As long as there are people learning, no matter how serious or how lightly they take it, then we’ve taken a huge step forward from a system so old and so rusty that the fact that it’s still existing in a world such as ours seems unbelievable.

His “my way or the highway ” approach didn’t yield results when he was the Assistant Dean at UCI and he was forced to step down from his position and continue only as a professor. The issue then as is it now is the professors unease with diversity both of the class and the experience of how to handle it.

Clearly he seems opinionated and inflexible to handle a MOOC class which is vastly different than a 50-60 college class that only purchases his $87 textbooks and listens to his lectures in a classroom setting.

Prof Mckenzie should also realize that he has tarnished the image of UC Irvine by such actions since many prospective relationships that he could have formed may be short circuited by his high handed approach.

I am following a number of Coursera – the Fantasy and Science fiction course is very interactive with super tutor videos.

Coursera can certainly count me in as a keen and future student – if the course fees don’t get too high.Having the option to do a course once to see and the second time to commit and pay – may be a reason solution for all.

Most of us don’t have the luxury of a 4 year hiatus and a 30yr loan as financial support to play ‘grown up’. In the ‘real world’ time and resources are scarce. For the people who can find the time for higher learning, it’s not hard to imagine that they’ll also find a way to make due without luxuries like over-priced textbooks.

I know, I know it’s appalling. Some people dynamically adapt in spite of their personal limitations as opposed to taking on more debt and accepting process as canon. Bloody extremists! Disgusting!. /s

In all honesty, I have enrolled in a handful of courses on 3 of the major MOOC sites. The first was on Coursera and I didn’t get to join until the course was already 3 weeks in. I followed for a while and did probably 1/3-1/2 of the assignments before moving on.

Currently, I’m taking Algorithms I. The instructor Robert Sedgwick is a pretty amazing. The booksite is very useful although, the class is mostly about writing code so I don’t see much point in buying a text copy. Some of the students self-organized study groups via Google+ communities. There is an ongoing a course-relevant dialog via posts weekly video chats where we share notes and help each other out. There’s even a post in the forum for each assignment where people are encouraged to share unit tests they’ve developed.

I have seem more organized group collaboration in this one course than all of the classes I took over the 2 years I spent at a public university combined. If I had a similar learning environment then I would have seen cause to stay until I completed my degree. Learning isn’t just about an individual’s capacity for knowledge, it’s also important to learn soft skills like how to work as a team.