<p>Oh, that’s just weird to me I guess. I think it was kaszinski (apparently he has a “teaching” link on his group website that shows a sample 220b course site) that had the course website public (the Rizzo guy has one publicly open under his “teaching” link as well, but it doesn’t appear he uses a “class pack”). The reason what you say is weird to me is because our teachers stress a solid amount of content, but it’s more about application, so the better professors will spend a whole class delving very deeply into the dynamics of say 1 or 2 reactions. And most use the chalkboard (only two professors use powerpoint/overhead and that type of thing, and one of them really just uses it as a supplement). To make sure we pay attention, the better ones (4 of like 6 or 7) just use some level of socratic method (there are two extremely high quality instructors. One uses more of a hybrid lecture/socratic method. Kind of like a “socratic-guided lecture” where it’s clear that everything is perfectly planned. My professor was the other who used basically a pure socratic method and a pbl type of approach where you may get called to the board to solve some ridiculous problem. Cold calls were much more frequent in my class than the other and the class would basically be framed with a certain topic in mind and the details that are covered about that topic are essentially controlled by the class discussion). Needless to say, students pay the price with insanely difficult exams compared to most schools, but whatever, I suppose it was worth it (2nd semester was crazy!). It got me to like chemistry lol (darn sure prepped me for grad. classes). Something tells me that the difference may come from the fact that section sizes were pretty small (in a relative sense? I think). Are the classes there big?</p>
<p>Regardless, I don’t think this idea of the “class pack” is uncommon. I may have seen something similar on one of Harvard’s websites (in fact, I think several of the chem and natural science courses that have a stable instructor: as in one that teaches the course several years consecutively). Seems like it could be a reasonable solution for a course with large enrollment that stresses lots of content.</p>