The main new capability seems to be the catalog that allows courses to be discovered across institutions
It’s about open education in general.
Second, the biggest missing piece from both models is…you know…teaching.
In my view, there are two elements that are still missing from both of these visions. The first is a sustainability model
While the cMOOCs are doing some interesting experimentation in pedagogy, I see little innovation in either course design or platform affordances in the xMOOCs.
Udacity’s big invention was multiple-choice quizzes built into videos. Coursera has messed around with peer review, but because they don’t actually work with faculty on course designs, it’s not clear that it’s being used effectively by anyone.
Overall, while the xMOOCs may make noises about disruptive innovation, from a pedagogical perspective, they don’t fundamentally change the lecture-and-quiz model of the traditional classroom.