Excellent article discussing the development of adaptable tutorials for students to learn content without a professor. 

Evidence in this case study suggests that the information being studied could be learned more quickly, albeit not necessarily better, with a professor:

“If they’re all getting that baseline information, [faculty] can spend that class time going deeper and doing something much more interesting, so they can really leverage that you’re an expert,” says Candace Thille, director of the Open Learning Initiative, “because right now, oftentimes the faculty expertise is wasted.”

And. . .

The virtual tutor takes care of the basic concepts that typically dominate lectures, leaving professors open to plan the face-to-face component of the course according to what parts of the curriculum the software tells him students are picking up more slowly, and what concepts could bear reinforcement. . . .[This is a] a preferable alternative, Thille says, to rolling through concepts didactically and hoping they stick.

 Using technology, we may be able to scale the learning to accommodate more people.