My takeaway from Learning@Scale, the first big CS Education conference to focus on Learning Sciences and Computer Science "at scale", is that the people who succeed at them are the people who already have some higher education and are driven and motivated. I don't think most of the serious researchers are convinced they'll be THAT useful in the long run. I'd dig up the research papers, but I'm supposed to be working :) I recommend a quick glance over their latest issues.