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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

Online teaching works particularly well for the tutorial model, where you have a small number (<5) of students plus the instructor engaged in discussion. It fails completely for large classes. That's not dissimilar to the situation before the plague.

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Wow I'd argue the opposite. Large classes / lectures I didn't even interact with the professor in person, might as well just get that info online. Smaller classes I found in person discussions much more valuable.

In the large classes you still need to have tutorials, this time led by the TAs. On-line TA herding is difficult, I don't envy anyone who is doing this right now. There's also the hallway track, students organizing themselves into study groups and interest groups. Doing that on-line is quite impossible, how do you have random encounters after class?

> It fails completely for large classes.

Large in-person classes you don't even have discussions. Some universities have lecture halls of 400-600 students, and you have to go ask a TA for help later in the week

> That's not dissimilar to the situation before the plague.

So I think you agree and are saying that it's the same?

It's absolutely the same. Before, you'd outsource homework and grading in the large introductory classes to awful proprietary tech, the fact that now you have people who can't put a proper recording of their class together doesn't make it worse.

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