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Revolution Hits the Universities – NYTimes.com:

“My opening discussion of C. Wright Mills’s classic 1959 book, ‘The Sociological Imagination,’ was a close reading of the text, in which I reviewed a key chapter line by line. I asked students to follow along in their own copies, as I do in the lecture hall. When I give this lecture on the Princeton campus, I usually receive a few penetrating questions. In this case, however, within a few hours of posting the online version, the course forums came alive with hundreds of comments and questions. Several days later there were thousands. … Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I had in a career of teaching, which significantly influenced each of my subsequent lectures and seminars.’”

Good op-ed about MOOCs. I don’t know if they are the silver bullet, but they are another avenue. My experience with an online course on Coursera last semester was positive, but we had the face-to-face time as well participating online.