Tony Bates provides a summary to his series of writings on areas where online learning may enable productivity gains, such as through access, scalable content, sound course design, and learner support. Amongst his conclusions are that “content is only one component of teaching (and an increasingly less important component); other components such as learner support and assessment are even more important,” as well as “new online course designs built around the use of new technologies have greater potential for increases in productivity–through producing better learning outcomes–for the learning that matters most, than through scaling up, i.e. by increasing teacher:student ratios.”
http://www.tonybates.ca/2013/12/23/productivity-and-online-learning-redux/