The beauty of online courses is that people will hopefully have the opportunity to cheaply repeat lectures ad-nauseum until they finally feel they really KNOW their stuff.

This is contrasted to the brutal method of being forced to learn things within a short period of time, often forgetting what you learned or just picking up banal mechanics. The focus shifts back to thoroughly learning course materials.

Online education is a true equalizer.

NB: Been a fan of online education since OCW started up where the costs of the raw material plummeted to the cost of your internet connection.

That's exactly my plan for PGM. If I'd had nothing else keeping me busy maybe I would've kept up, but as soon as I fell behind it was clear I was in trouble.

Coursera's talked about maybe taking videos down for a while between courses, I hope they don't. I'm going to save them just in case, but it'd be nice to have the inline quizzes.

The phenomenon you describe is still ever-present in the online format if you stick to their deadlines. If you ignore them and the associated grade penalties, then ok I agree.