Now, give me a $500,000 a year job as a college administrator. There, I've just freed up 6 professor hours a week for your chemistry department for a massive increase in productivity. 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. The professor would be available by Skype during posted office hours, as usual. 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. So, for the Monday lecture, you have the 24 hours of Monday to watch the lecture as many times as you'd like. A better approach would be on demand within a given window. The department can have multiple professors deliver the lectures and stream them to all sections at different times.
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. 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. Have the professor offer that shite online and have his office hours available through Skype for those classes. There is no reason that a freshman seminar class with 300 students needs to meet in person three times a week. Colleges definitely need to go online moreġ00%.