[baoha]

In this case, he should have recruited students who are well versed in these things to help conducting the course as TAs. He could have only taught about the principal/design, and let the TAs teach the real coding part.

I found this approach is very effective for students because they basically learn the skills from their peers or even roommates, and if they are friends on campus, they can ask questions any time outside of TA hours. My alma mater has an excellent undergrad TA program where students who performed well in the course are recruited to be TAs when the course is offered later again.

[cycomachead]

This does happen most of the time, and UM has quite a large TA group. He almost definitely had TAs and the majority of the learning is around discussion/recitation sections and practice. In this case, he also wasn't developing the course from scratch either. So, the content in the course was built by those more familiar with the web.