As promised back at the end of last year, here's a Q&A with Nick Santos on the state of the UC Davis five course Coursera GIS specialization. Thanks to Nick for taking the time to answer my questions.
1) How’s it going teaching desktop users remotely? So far as I know, you were the second MOOC instructor to do so. You noted that as a key distinguisher of the specialization.
It's going well - the biggest challenge for me is volume of students. [When] things in an in-person course don't go perfectly, you're around to address [them] with the students. [In the specialization, issues must be] smoothed over and made clear online. The great thing is that this format allows for rapid iteration, so fixes for unclear items can be made as soon as we have them ready, but it's still a lot to deal with so many students who understand instructions a little differently.

