As for courses being too fast: they're college courses. That's a core part of their value proposition. If they were slower, or did not follow a rigid schedule at all (like the "better" examples presented in the article), they would be a fundamentally different product. The author simply doesn't understand the concept behind MOOCs, and probably isn't their intended audience. He would be better served watching lectures on Youtube (I don't mean that sarcastically, there are fantastic courses available there).
Synchronous learning is not, as another poster claims, an anachronism. It simply isn't necessary or valuable for everyone. For some, myself included, it is a significant benefit. That is the market that Coursera and edX are targeting, and one shouldn't criticize a company simply because one isn't a member of their target market.