With motivation, an ordinary person can accomplish great things. Without it, a great person can accomplish only ordinary things. Online learning is missing the main classroom motivations: competition with peers, and social status for success. This could be added, but hasn't been yet.
Time is a limited resource, so why are people wasting time learning things they have no real intention of using or remembering long term? Some types of learning are for temporary use, but most education in college shouldn't be. A missing component to all education is refreshing what you've learned sufficiently throughout your life so that you can use it.
We need a website that is like an automated flash card system, that remembers everything that you've invested the time to learn, and scientifically polls you depending on your recall success. It should be more than just facts memory, but also exercise solving techniques. Competition and status are needed here too.
It's a waste of limited resources for people to learn things they aren't going to maintain. There's too much tourism going on in education.
My own opinion is that OCW (and sites like is) is more PR and advertsing than anything else. I have been on the site, and am less than impressed. There is good material there, but slides without the explanation (lecture) are one step above useless. They are starting to add the audio/video component, which is a HUGE improvement. However, it does not include the recitation or lab, which are crucial—especially in an area like computer science (which I teach). In order to be a computer scientist, you need to learn how to program (among other things). For this you have to roll up your sleeves and learn by doing. All the lecture in the world won’t make you a good programmer.
BTW—I don’t think there is any reason you can’t have competition with peers online. Certainly, we interact with peers online all the time. As for social status, an online degree from the right school is probably worth quite a bit. Many companies just care about if you can do the job or not. They will check for the degree, but if you’ve got a track record, they typically won’t fuss about the pedigree of your school.