I've been wondering what's the point of online courses, at least in disciplines, where there are good books available? E.g. you could very well get the same (or deeper) knowledge of AI by reading Russell & Norwig book, or algorithms from D. Knuth books. And text is mostly always is a better format than video lectures.
As I understand, participating in a course will put some pressure to complete most exercises and actually finish the course. You would also get some automated submission checks and could extend CV in the end. Also courses might mention recent discoveries that didn't find their way in books yet. Is that all or I'm missing something?
I think the experience of taking the classes is far richer than just reading a good text book. Advantages: video lectures with "pay attention" embedded quizes (that you can re-watch parts of as required), tests that you learn from by taking repetitively until you get a good/perfect score on, class forums, and homework that is automatically graded.
As I understand, participating in a course will put some pressure to complete most exercises and actually finish the course. You would also get some automated submission checks and could extend CV in the end. Also courses might mention recent discoveries that didn't find their way in books yet. Is that all or I'm missing something?