Teaching Company Plugged at CHE

I was mostly pleased to read "What I've Learned From Recorded Lectures" by Thomas H. Benton in the August 10 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. While he notes that there are many providers of recorded lectures, he notes that the biggest such company is The Teaching Company. I really like this company's products (we have over a dozen of their courses on CD), though some are better than others of course.

It seems that Benton generally has benefited from Teaching Company courses as well, so I was pleased to see this mostly positive plug for them. He mentions a few "gripes", but I really find these to be either minor or not well-informed. First, he complains about the introductory music for each -- but that goes by so fast, is it really an annoyance worth mentioning? He complains that he has heard "canned applause", but I've never heard any of this, so I wonder about that: I think some of the lectures are taped in front of an actual class, so perhaps that is what he is hearing? Or perhaps there is some canned applause for some lectures, and I just haven't heard those ones -- there are hundreds of courses to choose from, one of the great things about their catalog!

He also complains about their pricing, where courses are highly priced for most of the year, but then go on sale a few times a year at greatly discounted prices. But The Teaching Company is quite clear about why this is -- they mass produce each course a few times a year, and when they do they get a significant volume discount on production. They don't hide this fact, but rather are quite upfront about it and encourage customers to watch for sales on anything they are interested in but don't have to have immediately. I've never bought any of their products at full price, as I always wait for the sales -- and every product in their catalog goes on sale at least once a year. And, as Benton notes, you can always try the secondary market, like eBay, where I've gotten some recorded courses as well (not Teaching Company ones, though many of these are constantly available on eBay).

But my biggest complaint about Benton's piece is that while he asks some good questions, and encourages the reader to think of these lectures in a positive way, he also at some points seems apologetic for having used recorded lectures to help him learn, prepare courses, and so on. For instance, he rightly asks why recording lectures for commercial sale isn't something that is well-respected in academia. But then he also writes "There is something a little shameful, perhaps, about a professor using a commercial product to develop course material." But there is nothing shameful in this at all! You don't need to apologize for using such materials! If they are valuable materials -- accurate, well-done, scholarly, and so on -- then why not? Those who should be ashamed are any academics who persist in having anti-commercial attitudes to the use of such products, whether for learning, to aid in course prep, or whatever.