add scale section

Author: bnmnetp

pretext/introduction.ptx

@@ -83,6 +83,32 @@ One of the strengths of Runestone is that many of our features have been created
 <p>If every class that used Runestone could pay $100 for the semester regardless of the size of the class we would have enough money to be fully sustainable, and not show any ads to anyone.  We would love that.  We are not huge fans of ads either.  So maybe you can help us figure out how to do that.</p>
 </section>
 
+<section>
+<title>A Word about Scale</title>
+<p>This section added in September 2023.</p>
+<p>As you will see in our history, Runestone came out of a small liberal arts college.  Class sizes were around 30 students.  A huge number of our courses are high school AP CS courses using the CSAwesome book.  Those courses tend to be in the 10 -- 60 student range.  For courses that size Runestone has worked well for many years.</p>
+<p>Recently Runestone Academy has become a tool for courses at much larger institutions and consequently we are seeing course sizes grew.  I was totally taken off guard in August of 2023 when three courses containing 1000+ students were created.  To this I would say the following:
+<ul>
+<li>
+        A 500+ student course has never been a design point for Runestone.  So, yes, things like the gradebook or student progress tabs, are likely to time out.  The good news is that your students will not notice, it just makes your life difficult! Sorry!  We will work on it.  But also recognize that a course of 1000+ puts a lot of additional demand on our servers.
+</li>
+<li>
+        If you want to use the practice tool for a very large course then you should definitely set the option to have flashcards generated when a student starts a page or the option for when they complete a page.  If you try to have it generate flashcards for the students when you mark a section as complete you are going to be frustrated!
+</li>
+<li>
+        You may also wish to consider breaking a very large course into multiple courses corresponding to different sections.  You can set up one section as a master and then your TAs can copy assignments from the master course.
+</li>
+<li>
+        If you are from an institution that has classes of 1000+ then I would ask that you really make an effort to support Runestone Academy.   Either directly from your department, or stating on your syllabus that students should donate.  In the future we may have to institute a small fee for very large courses.
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+</p>
+<p>
+    If your course is in the 100-300 student range you may notice that things are a bit slower than you would like, but generally it should all work.
+</p>
+</section>
+
 <section xml:id="a-brief-history">
 <title>A Brief History of Runestone</title>
 <p>The Runestone project began in on my sabbatical in 2011.  I've already mentioned that I had serious writers block because I wanted computer science textbooks to be interactive.  The first stage in fixing that problem was finding a way to run Python in the browser.  This led me to the <url href="https://skulpt.org" visual="Skulpt Project" />