"These online platforms need to be designed in a way that is intuitive, easy to use and that enhances student learning." This cuts to the heart of the issue. A good place to start would be "how do we design a learning ecology/system" for students who have grown up in a digital, social media environment? As you say, an ordinary student survey will not deliver the information needed.

Rather than getting into an oppositional war between BAU and MOOCs, which seems to be consuming people, let's start with open questions. At this stage, questions are actually more important than answers.

And, obviously, when we do have some answers, these have to be incorporated into the BAU investments but surely will give us better solutions that the current debate. Although recent times are littered with large incumbents who tried to keep going with their current business models, such as RIM/Blackberry, Nokia, newspapers, and bookshops.

What, for example, can universities learn from the ways other businesses have developed great communities with their customers, clients, participants, whatever you want to call them. Who are using the insights provided by their users to develop more responsive platforms and products. What works/doesn't work for young people using social engagement on-line sites? Digital media is essentially empowering and democratising, and enhances P2P collaboration. This is important for academics to remember when considering how to deliver the best student experience.

The barriers to learning are many and the solutions will need to explore these in an integrated way, and experiment with solutions. It is disturbing to see a sector - the learning sector - reluctant to embrace experimentation as a learning model.

Great design thinking offers a sound way to consider the issues. And universities have deep expertise in this area. Let's hope it gets used to the fullest.

I recently signed up with Coursera and completed a subject on Gamification. I enjoyed meeting people from around the world and we had a fortnightly meeting via google+, interactions on facebook and twitter. While the course was good, I am not sure about being assessed by peers whose level of expertise or engagement is not clearly understood.

My background is self-taught as a designer/art director/marketing person and the reason I came back to study on campus, is that you cannot replace the interaction you get in a classroom, even with all the human messiness it entails. I think online learning would be an acceptable learning option for me, if and only if, I could not get access to an expert on campus, but given the number of students who sign up for these classes (in the course I completed over 62,000 students were enrolled), it also makes it very difficult to use the forums and keep on top of comments and other student interactions.

If an online course is to be supplemented, then training of the teacher to actually be able to use the technology at expert level becomes an important factor as well. You mention that "...pedagogy must guide decisions about technology". In my opinion this is extremely important, but universities are morphing into corporations (of some sort), and this is being ignored in the process. Finland has a unique view on education and it would be interesting to see how they tackle the online learning, perhaps we could learn a few things from them.

Besides the usual Biggs, Bloom, Sotto, Knowles generic research, synthesis and prescription on designing for learning, there have been an number of books etc on e-Learning and pedagogy specifically, some of which are even relatively recent (i.e. published in the last 5-6 years). I posted this list earlier but it is also pertinent here:
Lit Sample (not recommendations as such)
Web-based Intelligent E-Learning, Ma, 2006
Advances in Web-based Education, Magoulas/Chen 2006
The Tools for Successful Online teaching, Dawley, 2007
Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age, Beetham/Sharpe, 2007
Advances in E-Learning, Penalvo, 2008
Applied E-Learning and E-teaching in Higher Education, Donnelly/McSweeney 2009
A Guide to Authentic E-Learning, Herrington, 2010

Teachers still assume teaching online is the same as teaching face to face - this mentality needs to change. So while pedagogy needs to lead, and design for online teaching needs to allow for better user experience, I think it is also important that teachers be trained on how to use the technology, so that they can use that knowledge to design teaching modules that makes best use of technology available.

I recently did an online Masters course and found the experience invigorating. There were many advantages and some disadvantages. I found the design of the interface cumbersome but the ability to post into a conversation at any time and know other like-minded people would respond to my words consistently over the next semester was empowering.

The lecturers had various abilities with handling people, interfaces and learning. There were varying levels of input by students. Those group assignments sorted the workers out from the others (if you read the dialogue) but the lecturers didn't seem to care. A student to student assessment would have helped.

There is plenty to improve and designing the service with current and potential students, lecturers, IT, accountants, open source developers, potential employers, and the like in a continual learning iteration loop.
Service Design offers this design service.

Thanks for the article Gavin, as you say current LMSs such as Bb and Moodle come with their own positives and negatives.

Could we consider them as a "middleware layer"? They have core functions, the ability to connect to related systems such as student info systems, CRM etc, the openness to plug in new and additional tools and should also provide a level learning analytics.

For me however, the key issue is achieving an"appropriate" funding level - in many cases a university's "online" campus has more students that some of its physical campuses and on a per-head-basis is grossly under-funded.

I just got this update on the Big History project being sponsored by Bill Gates -
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Topics/Education/Big-History-Project-Announcing-Educator-Beta

Hi notes, that "the content is really exciting. It mixes traditional video lectures with animations, texts and infographics." Once the pilot is finished, the material will be made available to all countries to become part of their curriculum. If this is the start of public-profit courses for secondary level students offered globally, will they be willing to sit through traditional lectures at university.

I'm waiting for the conversation on MOOCs and online learning to engage with secondary school students (maybe it has and I'm unaware of it) about their use of social media and digital for learning, and what they think works well and would like to see developed for university study. This is where the interface of gamified systems and online learning is exciting because it can increase attachment to learning and improve performance, building on techniques that students will already be comfortable with.