I truly believe you have really identified the elephant in the room with online learning (especially the free sites).
Learning is hard work. Period. Granted, its a different kind of work, and can be really enjoyable. As you stated, you need to put in the time and certain topics cannot be "watered down" too much no matter how hard the instructor may try.
The benefit of these sites are that anyone can sample the menu as there is no real downside. If one were to actually pay some fee for the course, the chances of sampling the different courses would really go down.
I don't believe there really is an issue here. Being able to try out different courses and realizing what you like and don't like is so incredibly powerful.
What can be improved on is to identify these types of learners. Coursera could start out right of the bat asking, "How likely are you to finish this course." The metric of completion should not be used to judge a course either.
Learning is hard work. Period. Granted, its a different kind of work, and can be really enjoyable. As you stated, you need to put in the time and certain topics cannot be "watered down" too much no matter how hard the instructor may try.
The benefit of these sites are that anyone can sample the menu as there is no real downside. If one were to actually pay some fee for the course, the chances of sampling the different courses would really go down.
I don't believe there really is an issue here. Being able to try out different courses and realizing what you like and don't like is so incredibly powerful.
What can be improved on is to identify these types of learners. Coursera could start out right of the bat asking, "How likely are you to finish this course." The metric of completion should not be used to judge a course either.