I teach Marketing Management part-time. I tried to lecture 55 students on google hangout, using the chat function.
While the students got engaged in the lesson by asking questions and commenting on key points, the content or topics that could be delivered was limited. This is because you have to type everything.
However, I felt that that students found it easy to understand the concepts explained. Interestingly, a number of students did say it was better than they expected. And got comments like ‘good class’. (This never happens in normal classes. 😃) And a number of students suggested we use audio. I have a tutorial class next. So i am thinking of using audio (in google hangout) and google docs. Based on that will conduct the following lecture.