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I feel this article doesn't understand what "learning at your own pace" means.

Yeah sure you can say "learners need this environment, this attendance, etc" but you're falling into the trap of what we have right now -- we think we know what's best for people to learn.

And while true for many people they definitely WILL learn with established practices, not everyone will learn as well as they could.

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100% I agree with you. The student should be the final decider on what type of course to take. From what I've seen when I ask people about MOOCs, lots of people say they want classroom environment but when you tell them about what if the MOOC is free. Then they all switch to MOOC because they figure they can just hire a tutor if they really need the human help.

Most of the people I see making that argument are "education experts" who are extremely arrogant. My prediction is they made these arguments because they feel threatened by the potential that MOOCs have. If MOOCs become very high quality then there is the very real threat that people will start asking if the preference for physical classroom time still has value.

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