Lecture/test allows people to only demonstrate competency in subject at the time of the test, meaning that even if they have a vague understanding when attendin

Lecture/test allows people to only demonstrate competency in subject at the time of the test, meaning that even if they have a vague understanding when attending (or skipping!) the lecture, they will use the period of time just before the test to cram and acquire the necessary knowledge to pass the test. In fact, I did this a couple weeks ago myself for a course in which I had no particular interest and yet was forced to take as a graduate student, doing the minimum amount of studying necessary to be reasonably certain I would get an A (spending my nights and weekends hacking instead of studying archeology). The wider problem then, I suspect, is people studying things they aren't all that interested in, which encourages procrastination and cramming. This may be a necessary feature of any sort of broad curriculum -- people should show competency in areas even if they don't have a particular interest in them. If so, then this does indicate "a flaw in the idea," insofar as the presumed idea will not work across a large spectrum of people and thus may not be implementable at the collegiate level. That said, you could theoretically modify it to have more frequent gradable quizzes on the lectures that people are supposed to watching at home, forcing them to watch them at the assigned times instead of attempting to assimilate the information at the last minute before the test.