I've watched/listened/read a handful of The Great Courses series over the years. There were some early video versions with small audiences of 5-10 people, but I've found over time that the camera on later ones into the late 00s and early 10s never shows any audience. This means the applause on the audio versions is almost always canned and used to give the appearance of an implied audience.
Students of these courses often are more on the passive side, so they seem to find reasonable scholars who also happen to be good lecturers/storytellers as the driving thrust. As a result, they don't always go into some of the deeper details as these also tend to be very introductory in nature. It seems rare to me that any of their offerings go beyond the freshman/sophomore level of material.
Thanks for teasing apart the differences in narrative you're seeing. Many of these courses are so pre-packaged that they don't provide "traditional" textbooks beyond the course guides which are usually scant notes/reviews of what appears in the lectures with a small handful of additional resources. It's really these additional readings where the more interesting pieces of a fuller course can be found, so I'm curious to hear what you think of their recommended readings/bibliographic suggestions (if any).
"It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught.
Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time."
~ Charles Simic, New York Review of Books, 2017
... I leave it to the students to source the first quote. : ))))))
Teaching to the test in America has exacerbated that problem in secondary ed. But every challenge is an opportunity! I take it as a chance to tell them a story they may only be vaguely aware of -- which is cool!!
I've watched/listened/read a handful of The Great Courses series over the years. There were some early video versions with small audiences of 5-10 people, but I've found over time that the camera on later ones into the late 00s and early 10s never shows any audience. This means the applause on the audio versions is almost always canned and used to give the appearance of an implied audience.
Students of these courses often are more on the passive side, so they seem to find reasonable scholars who also happen to be good lecturers/storytellers as the driving thrust. As a result, they don't always go into some of the deeper details as these also tend to be very introductory in nature. It seems rare to me that any of their offerings go beyond the freshman/sophomore level of material.
Thanks for teasing apart the differences in narrative you're seeing. Many of these courses are so pre-packaged that they don't provide "traditional" textbooks beyond the course guides which are usually scant notes/reviews of what appears in the lectures with a small handful of additional resources. It's really these additional readings where the more interesting pieces of a fuller course can be found, so I'm curious to hear what you think of their recommended readings/bibliographic suggestions (if any).
Thanks, Chris. I think I'll say something about the format, including the "Guidebook", over on Lifelong Learners in the next day or so.
And 'this week';
Lost Mayan city found in Mexico jungle by accident
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmznzkly3go
... so the numbers with another de-stabilising wobble.
Ha ha ha...
Quote 1
"Enough?"
Quote 2
"It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught.
Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time."
~ Charles Simic, New York Review of Books, 2017
... I leave it to the students to source the first quote. : ))))))
Teaching to the test in America has exacerbated that problem in secondary ed. But every challenge is an opportunity! I take it as a chance to tell them a story they may only be vaguely aware of -- which is cool!!