The Great Courses
Self-Education Products from The Teaching Company
An important secondary theme of Objectivism: Reality Anchored Principles is to show any able human how to enrich their general knowledge well-beyond that of a university education and how to do that conveniently with great pleasure and little cost. This book’s content and my ability to confidently write it were significantly enriched by The Great Courses. That is why I write several sections about them in “Part 7: Objective Knowledge Resources.” I submit that from these courses you can also earn much valuable knowledge.
Things Change (A Disclaimer)
On this page and in my book, I offer some information about The Teaching Company and The Great Courses. Things change. For current information, consult their website’s FAQ pages.
The Great Courses Plus Website
TheGreatCoursesPlus.com is a subscription site from which The Great Courses can be streamed. I highly recommend this service because its subscription price is a tremendous bargain and because it offers hugely discounted prices and free shipping for purchasing à la carte courses from TheGreatCourses.com, whether the course is Plus hosted or not.
Further note that due to copyright restrictions some older DVD courses will only ouput audio on TheGreatCoursesPlus. The DVDs for such courses might be available from TheGreatCourses or they might have become retired altoghether.
Orrin Smith earns modest commissions for signups to The Great Courses Plus.
The Great Courses Website
From TheGreatCourses.com, à la carte courses can be purchased.
TheGreatCourses.com
Which Great Courses Are Academic Courses?
Early in its existence, The Teaching Company only produced Great Courses of an academic nature, and the courses were hosted on TheGreatCourses.com. Later, courses became added under a new top category named Better Living. However, as the number of those courses increased, the Better Living category was dropped and those courses were promoted into several new top categories. Those “Better Living” courses incorporate The Teaching Company’s tradition of teaching excellence, and some or many of them are of an academic nature, but most are not.
How About a Systematic Approach to The Great Courses?
The Teaching Company’s websites are excellent and attractive places to browse courses, but I think of them as good places for casual browsing. If you desire to approach the courses in a systematic manner, then I offer my below files for such an approach. Nothing is exact, but you should find my files to be very useful in this respect.
Orrin’s Great Course Files
Something larger than a cell phone will be necessary to view these files.
- Orrin’s Great Courses Study Record:
- Consult the book: Part 4, Section 4, Apr. 1, 2008.
- 330 courses (plus 48 repeats) by July of 2015.
- OrrinsGreatCoursesStudyRecord.pdf
- Orrin’s Great Courses Long Lists:
- Consult the book: Part 7, Sections 7 through 10.
- 945 courses by September of 2023.
- An editable Excel 2016 workbook:
- A worksheet tab: A well-organized list of 945 courses.
- Three prepopulated categorization columns.
- No variously categorized duplications: one course, one row.
- Mark and unmark courses for consideration.
- Date mark courses as completed (one to four independent completions).
- Automated course completion statistics.
- Just text. No eyeball consuming graphics!
- A worksheet tab: Explanations and instructions for spreadsheet usage.
- A worksheet tab: Identifies the most recently included courses.
- OrrinsGreatCoursesLongList.xlsx
- A worksheet tab: A well-organized list of 945 courses.
- A PDF copy of the whole workbook.