Live versus internet instruction

Dave Figlio, Mark Rush, and Lu Yin report in an NBER working paper that students randomly assigned to live lectures generally do as well or better than students who get their lectures over the internet. Male students, Hispanic students, and underachieving students seem to do better getting their lectures live.

I'd like to know if a live-internet hybrid would suit our students better. Specifically, I think there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of instructors out there who can deliver a canned Econ 101 lecture better than I can ("better" defined in terms of smooth delivery, clever one-liners, pretty charts, and so on). The comparative advantage of the real live instructor, I believe, is in answering questions, recognizing a quizzical look on a student's face and probing him to see what is puzzling him, connecting one student's comments to another's, connecting the lecture material to today's news or something happening on campus or in students' lives. Wouldn't students be better off if they watched canned lectures on Youtube and I organized classes more like the tutorial sections I taught in grad school?

Next: the virtues of outsourcing the grading of exams and papers.