I did something similar to a 200 level Econ class.. the prof was a local businessman that crossed his time in a night 3 hour class once a week...
In the very first class he comes in with stacks of printed material and starts handing them out.. instructing us that weekly we were to read stated material, understand it, write a weekly paper on it to turn in weekly, take a short quiz each week. After that classes were concluded for the week....
He asked if there were any questions.. someone piped up and asked if there really was going to be no instructor involvement to actually teach us the topic.
His answer was two fold..
1) If we had questions on the material, we could ask before the quiz.. he validated that would be the professor involvement of the material.
2) He though Economics was a boring enough subject on its own (which he has some correctness to that statement) that we needed not be bored with him covering the material in a class room setting.. when we could simply learn it with the combination of text books and his printed material.
Being the goof I sometimes am... I choose to ask a question on whom else instructed the course?
He spit out two other names at different times, and then asked why.
I cocked off something like.. "I gave up my left leg to attend this college, and this is the quality of education I am suppose to receive in return... I'm outta here..." then I preceded to emphatically limp out of the classroom...
A couple of buddies that were in the same classroom states giggles sprung aloud as I exited.. and the prof was none to happy about it.
IMO, that is the example of the bullshit the state college throw in front of you.. a business jockey, looking for some extra income by instructing a class in which he will do very little in participation past putting the initial information packet together.. he had a aid that checked all the written assignments weekly.. hell she probably put together the information on day one together too..
"The oranges are dry; the apples are mealy; and the papayas... I don't know what's going on with the papayas!"