100%. There is no reason that a freshman seminar class with 300 students needs to meet in person three times a week. Have the professor offer that shite online and have his office hours available through Skype for those classes. Reserve the in person classes for those that require physical presence (like labs and such) and classes taken after a major is declared where a back and forth between the students and the professors during class is desirable and encouraged.

When I talk about 300 kids sitting in a room staring at what's going on up front and not being allowed to talk, am I talking about a college class or have I just described a screening of "Frozen"? What works to deliver a Pixar movie will work to deliver a freshman seminar.

Plus, it opens up resources. The department can have multiple professors deliver the lectures and stream them to all sections at different times. A better approach would be on demand within a given window. So, for the Monday lecture, you have the 24 hours of Monday to watch the lecture as many times as you'd like. After that, it's no longer available. You'd have to put some restrictions like that to keep students engaged for the semester instead of trying to cram 30 hours of lectures 3 days before the final. The professor would be available by Skype during posted office hours, as usual. Instead of having 3 professors each teaching a section of a course with 3 meetings a week for 9 professor-hours devoted to lectures, you let the same three professors work as a team, each recording one lecture a week for a total of 3 professor-hours, freeing them up for other tasks, research, etc. There, I've just freed up 6 professor hours a week for your chemistry department for a massive increase in productivity. Now, give me a $500,000 a year job as a college administrator.

Of course, colleges will never do this. They've got to pay to maintain that giant auditorium and all those buildings whether or not they use them, so why would they ever willingly quit using them and justifying their "facilities fees"?

This post was edited on 4/14/20 at 9:24 am