SUGGESTION: The Teaching Company Great Courses

Joseph Turner

I think it would be great to have these courses available like Logos Mobile Ed.  Each course comes with a course guide, and I think they already have the transcripts of each course, so all of that could supplied through Logos.  There is a wealth of information in these courses covering ancient history.  I have been using them recently and they are very helpful.  I have the following:

Ancient Empires before Alexander

The Apocalypse: Controversies and Meaning in Western History (Craig Koester)

Between the Rivers:  The History of Ancient Mesopotamia

History of Ancient Rome

History of Ancient Egypt

They also have several courses on Christianity and Judaism.

Kenute P. Curry

[Y][Y][Y][Y][Y]

Randy W. Sims

http://www.audible.com/mt/TGC 

Rosie Perera

I have a ton of Great Courses, and they are awesome! Unfortunately, I no longer have my nearly bi-weekly commute back and forth between Seattle and Vancouver (3 hours each way) so I don't spend time listening to them much anymore. Occasionally on the treadmill I do.

The ones I have that would be relevant to Logos would be:

• The Great Ideas of Philosophy
• St. Augustine's Confessions
• Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
• History of Christian Theology
• The Catholic Church: A History
• Lives of Great Christians
• The Story of the Bible
• The Life and Writings of C.S. Lewis
• Jewish Intellectual History: 16th to 20th Century
• American Religious History
• The Apostle Paul
• Jesus & the Gospels
• Biblical Wisdom Literature
• Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World
• No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life

Those are just a few. I have over 100 of their courses, everything from math and science to literature, art, music, philosophy, history, etc.

I'm not sure what the sales model would be for these, though. The Teaching Company already rotates through their entire catalogue offering all their courses for sale at drastic discounts (70 off) once a year. (I don't know if anybody ever pays "full" price for them; that might just be a marketing gimmick to make us think we're saving lots of money.) If Logos wouldn't match those prices, nobody in their right mind would buy these from Logos. (I mean Faithlife.) Also it doesn't need any special player to play them: they'll play in your browser or whatever other media player you have, or portable MP3 player, or in your CD player on your computer or at home or in your car. I'm not sure what value added there would be to playing them within Logos, and Logos is not exactly a sleek media player. I'm sure the experience would be at least minimally slower than playing them natively in a dedicated media player. So if Logos couldn't get people to think it was a better experience listening to or watching these courses in Logos, then why would people pay more to buy them in Logos format? And if Faithlife couldn't mark them up at all over what the Teaching Company sells them for, then what's in it for them.

Amazon owns Audible, and they seem to be able to manage to offer the Great Courses for that 70% discount all the time. They have the volume to be able to afford that. I bet they were able to negotiate a deal with The Teaching Company that still allows them to make a small profit. I doubt Faithlife would do enough volume to be able to do that.

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/739821#Comment_739821

Rosie Perera said:

I'm not sure what value added there would be to playing them within Logos, and Logos is not exactly a sleek media player. I'm sure the experience would be at least minimally slower than playing them natively in a dedicated media player. So if Logos couldn't get people to think it was a better experience listening to or watching these courses in Logos, then why would people pay more to buy them in Logos format?

I was thinking the added value would be more in the course guides and transcripts themselves being in Logos format.  The videos (I wouldn't want Logos to do audio since that leaves out the maps and other valuable visuals) would play in Logos just like the Mobile Ed courses, except they would play as a continuous video as do the originals.  

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/739821#Comment_739821

Rosie Perera said:

The Teaching Company already rotates through their entire catalogue offering all their courses for sale at drastic discounts (70 off) once a year. (I don't know if anybody ever pays "full" price for them; that might just be a marketing gimmick to make us think we're saving lots of money.) If Logos wouldn't match those prices, nobody in their right mind would buy these from Logos.

Agreed.  I get the DVDs used on Amazon.  No one should ever pay full price for these.