This is extremely interesting, because while I'd never heard of the '2 sigma problem' [1] before, one university class I had seems to have been largely modeled on it, but with a very different angle. It was a 'self paced' electrical engineering course where we were given a textbook and free to advance through it at our own pace - kind of farcically, since you needed to complete at least 2 chapters per week to finish by the end of the semester.
Moving forward to the next chapter required, exactly as described in that paper, the completion of a problem set and then a score of at least 90% on a test demonstrating mastery of the previous chapter, sometimes accompanied by also demonstrating that skill in a lab. But far from 1 on 1, this entire class was effectively 0 on infinity. The teaching assistant/proctors that we engaged with were there only to grade your work and provided minimal feedback.
And indeed it was one of the most educational 'classes' I ever took. But I think this challenges the concept that it has anything to do with 1 on 1 attention. But rather the outcome seems practically tautological - a good way to get people to perform to the point of mastery is to require that they perform to the point of mastery. Of course, at scale, all you're really doing is weeding out the people that are unable to achieve mastery. And indeed that class was considered a weed out course.
I had such a self-paced course in the '70s based on the book "Fundamentals of Logic Design" by Charles Roth, Jr. It should be noted that the book was specifically written for self-paced study, and as such acted as a sort of tutor by carefully laying out a sequence of reading short segments, answering short questions about the material, then doing more involved problems. I found this course to be very effective and motivating for me, especially given the undergraduate class sizes.
Wow, care to share your alma mater? That was the exact book we also used - some decades later, 5th edition for my class! Absolutely wonderful book. Wow, what a wave of emotions I got when looking at that book's cover again!
And yeah that course and book gave me a serious love of electrical engineering to the point I even considered swapping majors (it was part of the CS curriculum for us), and in hind sight I rather wish I did, but hey - wisdom to pass onto the kids.
That was at UT Austin, where Dr. Roth was a professor. Another thing about that course - the problems that were given by the TAs for the 90% proficiency checks seemed pretty challenging and weren't in the book. You really had to know your material, yet there were no big surprises.
A couple things come to mind reading this. Maybe your professor knew the material was engaging in itself or the textbook was exceptionally well written that any added structure on top was likely to complicate it. The second possibility was that maybe they knew it was a fundamental course that students must engage with anyway.
Regarding the lack of feedback, maybe grade was sufficient. Sometimes enough is best.
I feel like whats most important in teaching is that the teacher has integrity. If you can control the teacher in any way, that loses the dynamic. In fact, his idiosyncratic method might indirectly increased his integrity score, which we subconsciously evaluate on teachers before we allow ourselves to engage.
Mastery Learning, which Bloom advocates for in the two sigma problem paper, is an alternative to 1 on 1, not a way to achieve it.
What you describe seems to be a very poor implementation of mastery learning. But if the tutor is completely disengaged even 1 on 1 tutoring is unlikely to have good effects.
Moving forward to the next chapter required, exactly as described in that paper, the completion of a problem set and then a score of at least 90% on a test demonstrating mastery of the previous chapter, sometimes accompanied by also demonstrating that skill in a lab. But far from 1 on 1, this entire class was effectively 0 on infinity. The teaching assistant/proctors that we engaged with were there only to grade your work and provided minimal feedback.
And indeed it was one of the most educational 'classes' I ever took. But I think this challenges the concept that it has anything to do with 1 on 1 attention. But rather the outcome seems practically tautological - a good way to get people to perform to the point of mastery is to require that they perform to the point of mastery. Of course, at scale, all you're really doing is weeding out the people that are unable to achieve mastery. And indeed that class was considered a weed out course.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_sigma_problem