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The Teaching Company's The Great Courses for High School Credit
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The Teaching Company provides excellent college level lectures, called The Great Courses. We used them often in our homeschool, to supplement areas our boys were interested in, such as science and economics, and to fill in the gaps in my own weak areas, such as music. Today they are available not only on CD and DVD, but also as audio and video downloads as well as for digital devices. I was asked how to count these courses as high school credit:
Some homeschoolers feel that since The Teaching Company courses are college level, when you complete a big series (48 lectures) they should give a full credit of high school work in that subject. Other homeschoolers feel that since it isn't a "prepared curriculum" they would need to count hours, and 48 hours is NOT enough for a credit. Just for reference, 75-90 hours is worth 1/2 credit.
We used The Great Courses mainly as a supplement. My children worked on their Sonlight curriculum and I beefed it up with The Great Courses lectures. I had them take notes on each lecture for practice with college note-taking.
The Teaching Company was used to fill in gaps as well. Kevin hadn't taken any economics in high school because his brother studied economics 24/7 and I simply FORGOT. Bad Mom! Once Kevin finished The Teaching Company Economics lectures, I gave him 1/2 a high school credit.
I also gave my children full high school credit when they passed a CLEP exam. Because they learned SO much through The Teaching Company lectures, they were able to pass quite a few CLEP exams in different topics. Each CLEP passed was transfered onto their transcript as a full credit high school honors course.
I can't give you any hard and fast rule about awarding credits for The Great Courses classes. In my opinion, an adult course with 48 lectures standing alone with nothing to supplement it would be a 1/2 credit class. A high school level course with workbook, supplemental reading, etc. would be a full credit course.
What do you use to supplement your high school studies? Do you have experience with The Teaching Company courses? Please share!
Please note: This post was originally published in April 2009 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
Do you enjoy these daily doses of high school homeschool wisdom? Sign up to get them delivered via email or reader!
The Teaching Company provides excellent college level lectures, called The Great Courses. We used them often in our homeschool, to supplement areas our boys were interested in, such as science and economics, and to fill in the gaps in my own weak areas, such as music. Today they are available not only on CD and DVD, but also as audio and video downloads as well as for digital devices. I was asked how to count these courses as high school credit:Lee,
Thanks for the suggestion in your newsletter to check our library for Teaching Company courses. Sure enough, our library has lots of them. Yea!! How do you decide how much credit to give for one of those courses? They'd make a great summer project.
Thanks,
Kitty in Washington
Some homeschoolers feel that since The Teaching Company courses are college level, when you complete a big series (48 lectures) they should give a full credit of high school work in that subject. Other homeschoolers feel that since it isn't a "prepared curriculum" they would need to count hours, and 48 hours is NOT enough for a credit. Just for reference, 75-90 hours is worth 1/2 credit.
We used The Great Courses mainly as a supplement. My children worked on their Sonlight curriculum and I beefed it up with The Great Courses lectures. I had them take notes on each lecture for practice with college note-taking.
The Teaching Company was used to fill in gaps as well. Kevin hadn't taken any economics in high school because his brother studied economics 24/7 and I simply FORGOT. Bad Mom! Once Kevin finished The Teaching Company Economics lectures, I gave him 1/2 a high school credit.
I also gave my children full high school credit when they passed a CLEP exam. Because they learned SO much through The Teaching Company lectures, they were able to pass quite a few CLEP exams in different topics. Each CLEP passed was transfered onto their transcript as a full credit high school honors course.
I can't give you any hard and fast rule about awarding credits for The Great Courses classes. In my opinion, an adult course with 48 lectures standing alone with nothing to supplement it would be a 1/2 credit class. A high school level course with workbook, supplemental reading, etc. would be a full credit course.
What do you use to supplement your high school studies? Do you have experience with The Teaching Company courses? Please share!
Please note: This post was originally published in April 2009 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
Do you enjoy these daily doses of high school homeschool wisdom? Sign up to get them delivered via email or reader!
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Phone: 1-888-Lee2HELP (1-888-533-2435)
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday: 9.00 am to 03:00 pm (PST)
Comments 8
This is great information! I have often wondered about using their courses. I'm also going to check my local library (another great tip).
Great info, Lee. How fortunate for me that my library has many of them. I will definitely check them out. Thank you.
That's terrific, Rebecca!
Robin
Assistant to The HomeScholar
Your links in this post are broken and do not work.
Dear Candice,
I have fixed them, so they should all work now.
Thanks for letting us know!
Robin
Assistant to The HomeScholar
Thanks for addressing this, Lee. I wanted more math credits for my non-math student (he did his Algebra I, II, and Geometry) but wanted to give him a break. We went with the Teaching Company's lectures on Stats and Probability. I'm just going to call it an intro course on his transcripts, but I agree that the practice in notetaking is very valuable, and I was pleased that the course included a booklet containing lecture notes and a few practice questions.
The Teaching Company is terrific and you might tell your readers to check their
library first before making a purchase.
Our library had a number of their courses.
I used their Economics which is
College level as a supplement to the Austrian School and then took a number of
topics to compare the two schools. I used the Richard Maybury books and Workbooks
for an intro to Austrian Economics, particularly What Ever Happened to Penny
Candy. These books are great for sifting out the false information the media and
academia feed us. We need leaders in this area to create good change.
I also used for a Review of Algebra 2 which my daughter felt they did a good job
on. I didn't use it for her real class though. Only because it was 2 years later
since she had Algebra and had to do her SAT/ACT.
Great resource - thanks! We're doing research for our daughter for next year, and I'll definitely look into this.