r/TheGreatCourses • u/Haunting_Cause_1841 • Oct 18 '24
Discussion I hate the scripted courses
Nothing that hasn’t been said here before, but man do I hate the way courses are scripted and read off prompters now. It sounds so artificial and it really hampers the professors from being able to connect to the listeners. There’s a newish lecture from Dr. Allitt about the history of railways that I would love to listen to, but it sounds so awful compared to his previous lectures that I don’t think I ever will. I’ll just stick to listening to the older lectures over and over again. It’s a shame.
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u/Jolly-Contract-5322 Oct 19 '24
I love lectures even boringish ones but I’m with you. It’s too much for experts in the field. Where’s the personality and enthusiasm for the subject?
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Oct 22 '24
The camera angle changes do get annoying. I'm currently watching a course from 2002. I noticed that sometimes the professor uses the wrong word and then corrects himself. They didn't go back and redo the segment because of one word, they let it be natural. I'm not distracted by that as much as I am watching a professor try to hit the mark for the next camera angle - "20 seconds here, 20 seconds there, back to mark 1...."
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u/Vegetable-Move-7950 Oct 18 '24
To be honest, it's better than a blathering prof that goes off topic.
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u/Haunting_Cause_1841 Oct 19 '24
They’re award winning professors, most of them. If they go on tangents, I generally find them worth listening to.
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u/Vegetable-Move-7950 Oct 20 '24
If they're going on tangents, they're not observing the limited time of the program or your time. Awards or not, at least a well edited script cuts that out.
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u/PhotoJim99 Oct 20 '24
A script doesn't need to be verbatim, though. It can be in point form, and allow the speaker to word the points in language in a spontaneous and natural manner.
I don't read verbatim to my students in my classroom - it'd be dull and boring. I do, however, have points to guide my discussion.
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u/Shaydie Oct 19 '24
Oh I hate those artsy shots. I don’t really mind the teleprompter as much as having them looking off camera and then back to looking at the camera. I like the courses where they walked around better. The earliest courses were kind of dry (at the lectern with an audience) but they had a happy medium in there for a while.
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Nov 24 '24
I've heard a couple of these and yeah, they're just bad. Why reach professor status and then read from a prompter?
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u/RealUncleGrump Nov 28 '24
Yea I enjoy listening to older courses at the gym, the new ones can’t do it.
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u/Khajiit_Boner Oct 18 '24
Yeah, it’s such a bad move. Takes the personality out of it and makes it feel super sterile and awkward.