How to Get a Campus Feeling in a MOOC

You can never recreate or replace the accelerated learning effect of being able to interact with your teacher and fellow students in person in physical proximity. At least, this is an argument that is often used by those who are not big fans of MOOCs (massive open online courses). The last time I saw it was in an article about the Open to Debate formerly known as Intelligence Squared U.S. debate at Columbia University on the question: Bricks or clicks But, in our connected world, does that really hold up?