Providers of MOOCs, including Coursera and edX, require registration to get to the materials. In other words, the only way to get to all the material inside is to enter this walled garden of the online course by registering. You might be thinking: What’s the big deal? Lots of sites require you to log in to gain access to content, right? Well, MOOC pioneer Stephen Downes says the problems with requiring registration, even when it’s free, are many—including that it makes it more difficult or even impossible for students to easily find potentially helpful lecture videos in internet searches or for other professors to assign pieces of the courses as resources in their own teaching.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-11-09-what-if-free-online-courses-weren-t-inside-walled-gardens
