I really like the idea of having more varied, interactive lectures in person. Some of my recent cs classes have been like that, and I found them much more interesting.

It's nice when the entire lecture involves students and when the lectures are not afraid to cover things outside the exams: for example, for my AI class, we had the lead scientist from IBM's Watson team give a talk and then spent several lectures just learning about the cool sorts of things you can do with AI in the real world (autonomous helicopters :)). This was a great finish to the class: it showed where and how the techniques we learned are actually used in a very interesting way.

I took the class and completed it - (but was not of the elite who achieved perfect scores). It was a well structured class with great presentation and had the best interactive exercises I have seen for a tech course.

Dr. Widom and her team did a tremendous job.

Absolutely agree, it is a perfect example of how an online class should be executed. The amazing Dr. Widom had shown how it needs to be done.

It's nice to read the it was a rewarding experience for professor Widom as well. I attended the course and thought it was excellent - I wrote about it here: http://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-databases-...