In some ways the answer may be “yes.”
In an interesting article published recently in Bloomberg, a Hult International Business School professor conducted a side-by-side test in his course, with one group of students taking the course in the standard way, in a classroom with a professor. The other group of students worked individually, using an online game that the professor had designed to see if the course could be delivered just as effectively on a digital platform .
The results were mixed. The “gamer” students scored better on the multiple choice questions at the end of the test period, but the classroom students did better on the case studies–where a sense of teamwork and an appreciation of business case nuance seemed to be most important.
It’s just one data point, of course, but it seems to lend credence to the idea that online delivery systems do have their place in academia. As universities experiment with MOOCs and other digital initiatives, it is likely that the allocation of faculty resources across campuses will change in the coming years. Forward thinking administrators are smart to be exploring how this will affect their schools, and how they can combine teaching resources with other colleges and universities.
Where it makes sense to have professors engaged directly with students in the classroom, that will continue. But where simple delivery of content is involved, the digital options offer the promise of much greater economies of scale. With all of the demographic, governmental and popular pressures on higher education, economies of scale will have to be be part of the solution.