I'm taking the cryptography course by Pr. Dan Boneh, it is awesome, it is really engaging, deep enough and all the material is very well done. Moreover I just discovered the second part of this course has been announced and is scheduled for early 2013, so it's fabulous.
All I can say is that for this course I would even be willing to invest myself even more (both in time and money) at the level of requirement of a graduate course. I really would be interested in paying the standart fee and follow the same course than the stanford students follow and have a kind of official credit in reward.
Yep, i liked the crypto course a lot too (took part in the first iteration in March).
The problem is that there is basically no "service" at all. The first iteration was delayed by several weeks (without any prior notice or status update) and there were several problems with the certificates (Ive gotten less programming credits than I should have and others had similar problems) but got no chance to get this corrected.
I guess thats the problem with free courses (and thats the reason I would like to pay some fee for it): You can just record the lessons once and afterwards repeat the course how often you want with very little updates - and very little help/service for students.
All I can say is that for this course I would even be willing to invest myself even more (both in time and money) at the level of requirement of a graduate course. I really would be interested in paying the standart fee and follow the same course than the stanford students follow and have a kind of official credit in reward.