Great Courses Launchpoint

The Teaching Company, LLC offers hundreds of video courses under the name “The Great Courses” on just about every subject imaginable, with more being added all the time.

Though offered for personal in-home viewing, these 30-minute lectures (or 45-minute in the case of Robert Greenberg’s engaging music courses) would make a wonderful centerpiece for a continuing education course.

As an instructor, what I would like to be able to do is show my class a Great Courses lecture, and then follow that with discussion and activities that reinforce and expand upon those  concepts during the remainder of a 60-minute or 90-minute class.

Not unlike what a good teaching assistant does in a college recitation section after a lecture by the professor, The Great Courses lecture would provide instructional scaffolding for both instructor and student.

I believe The Teaching Company has a great opportunity here.  Just by allowing an instructor to show a course to students (and charging a reasonable fee to do so), they would be opening up a new market for their products, and would no doubt bring in many new individual customers.

The Teaching Company could provide the courses “as is”, or could make available supplemental materials for the continuing education teacher and their students.

I even have a name for this new offering: Great Courses Launchpoint.

Currently, The Teaching Company doesn’t exactly encourage the use of their materials for face-to-face teaching:

My hope is that they will see the value of incorporating their video lectures into the classroom, and maybe Great Courses Launchpoint will roll out by the time I semi-retire in three or four years.  One of the frustrations of getting older is that my “day job” is taking a greater share of my time and available energy than ever before.  I love teaching, though, and semi-retirement will afford me the opportunity to begin teaching on a regular basis again.  Looking forward to it!

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