[Sciencewoman]

I think you have raised an interesting point. I'm on the on-line education committee and the curriculum committee for my university, and we are having discussions about the definition of a credit hour, appropriate use of on-line teaching methods, outside-of-class work load, etc. The advent of on-line instruction has created new teaching methods, such as the one you describe. Frankly, the waters are pretty muddy right now as brick-and-mortar institutions figure all of this out. I've noticed that many students seem to fall on one side of the fence or the other...they either love on-line instruction or they hate it. There's not much middle ground. One thing that has come across loud and clear is that students don't like enrolling in a face-to-face class only to find out there's a large on-line component.

Do you have a chance to discuss the powerpoints in class? Do the in-class activities link to the student assessments? That is the aspect that would concern me, since it sounds like your grade is based on what you're doing on your own, not on the in-class activities. I'm not sure how I feel about that, pedagogically.