At Reed (my alma mater), the “conference method” (i.e., seminar method) is the model, and it works for almost all subjects. Some courses do not have seminars (e.g., chemistry, and math, as I recall). But the vast majority do. In Humanities courses in 1st and 2nd yr it’s common to have combination of large lectures and conferences. This worked really well in my experience. In Hum 110, for example, I might be sitting in lecture hall with 200 students 2-3 times per week, but then in conference (seminar with 15-20 students led by a professor – no TA’s) once per week as well. Over the course of a semester, perhaps a dozen different lecturers would speak in their special areas to the large lectures; then the students would meet again in conference. And the conference professor did all the grading of papers. (No machine exams.) (See http://www.reed.edu/humanities/hum110/.)