I know in the popular imagination (and on CC) big classes are horrible
@blossom, you made a lot of great points in your post. My wife had one of those large lecture halls back in the Dark Ages in which the lecturers were Crick and Watson, the discoverers of the structure of DNA. Needless to say, the course was packed. It was packed because there was no other way to meet the demand and to provide students with the rare opportunity to hear it straight from two o the most prominent scientists if the day back at that time. I think you made that point really effectively that when a college has rock stars on the faculty, they need to open the doors to those large lecture halls so that as many students as possible can have access with “access” being the key word.
With regard to small classes, the reason they are important is that there is no other way to accomplish certain objectives. It’s not that they’re better, it’s that you simply can’t run an interactive seminar with 100+ students in the room. The 5 aspects to the language arts are reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing. And listening can’t just be something passive. Active listening requires interaction. Small classes are important because they increase your options for types of instruction which can be utilized and therefore the types of skills which students can develop.