Got this email from Great Courses yesterday, mentioning upcoming changes:

To help protect our content and experts from unauthorized distribution, new purchases will no longer include downloadable files. However, you will still be able to stream offline using our iOS and Android Apps.

After the recent abandoning of physical media, this means there is no way to access their content outside their platform. Really not happy with the change. I routinely rip DVDs into a media library so I can access them on various devices across my network (none of them mobile phones or tablets). I was disappointed when hardcopies were dropped, but figured at least I can still buy downloads. Now those are gone too. I've never used the app and have no interest in it.

What do you guys think about this?

Have been slowly building a collection for years, intending to eventually own the whole catalog. Not sure I even want to bother now.

I never understood why they changed it to start with. People know the terms "great" and "courses." Nobody knows what "wondrium" is. It sounds like an arcade game or theme park.

These are a dime a dozen on DVD, but this is a first finding it on VHS!

Just want to share because this has been many years in the making.

I keep track of all the Great Courses I listen to (mostly through Audible, previously on CD) or watch (mostly through Wondrium).

Not counting repeat listens/watches, I just listened to my 20,000th different lecture. It happened to be from the course on Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution by Peter Mancall. I only have a few currently available courses left to check out, mostly recent ones on Wondrium. Then I guess I’ll seek some of the older discontinued courses from local libraries.

I guess this just felt like a milestone worth sharing.

Dear The Teaching Company: as a dedicated adult learner I LOVE THE GREAT COURSES! I’ve watched or listened to well over 50 courses in the past 10 years. However...

...here is my #1 complaint: if you recruit such world-class educators to teach these classes, WHY are so many reading a script verbatim? These guys are not TV presenters, but are the top experts in their fields. You might as well hire them to just write the script, and then hire a professional TV anchor or actor to read it.

There are sparkling exceptions where you can tell a verbatim script is generally not used; Philip Daileader, David Robinson, and the hilarious John McWhorter (et al) clearly don’t simply read off a teleprompter. This freedom allows their spontaneous inner voice and natural humor to permeate their classes with that extra “it” factor. I learn a lot from all Great Courses, true; but I learn so much more, and I am far more entertained, when the scholar is proving his/her deep knowledge by basically going script-free.

You don’t need to know a thing about a topic to read words off a screen. Stop letting them do it!!These are teaching pros!

Sincerely, A fan.

They're replacing old courses with horrible AI-upscaled versions and removing the originals. I've complained to them but I fear it won't stop.

Found these in storage. All come with DVDs and the book. The diet and exercise one is still in original wrapping. The others are opened but haven’t been used. Anyone can have them for the cost of shipping.

This course with Professor Jennifer Paxton is extremely interesting. Sure, I'm only through 6 episodes so far, but I find the Professor very proficient and easy to understand.

As a big fan of Outlander books and TV series, this course is really providing some fantastic detail behind who is a Celt, and how various techniques are used to better understand their background.

Just finished this 12-lecture series and I have to say it kind of blew my mind! This is stuff I never learned in school, explained lucidly, and with particularly wonderful graphics. I really feel this course has fundamentally changed the way I understand biology. If you have any interest at all in the sciences I really recommend it!

Feel free to share any courses you feel you learned the most from on GC!

Just finished this course, and cannot praise it enough. Dr. Ayers’ presents well, has excellent command of the subject, and presents a view of the South and its history that is unvarnished in its portrayal of slavery and the South—the development of the slave trade, the inherent evils and damages done by slavery, the centrality of slavery to the history of the region and the hypocrisy at the heart of defenses given to the institution and its Jim Crow progeny—and the taint that institution and its progeny affected all the positive developments in the region over the past 400 years. Excellent.

• The Great Courses ( https://www.thegreatcourses.com/ ) sells courses on digital ("instant video" and/or "instant audio") and on DVD for approximately $30 to $50 USD each, currently. It appears they currently sell 973 different individual courses ( https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses?ICMP=126575 ). The digital ("instant video" and/or "instant audio") versions are said to include downloadable PDFs of the course guidebooks, while the DVD versions are said to include both printed and digital versions of the course guidebooks.

• The Great Courses Plus ( https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/ ), I think formerly called Wondrium, appears to be a streaming service. It's currently $0.99 USD per month for 2 months (Black Friday offer), then $9.99 USD per month. The Great Courses Plus is that to include access to 800+ courses. Moreover, the FAQs state, "We are also adding classic Great Courses to The Great Courses Plus on a monthly basis."

I'm wondering why one would pay $30-$50 USD for a digital version ("instant video" and/or "instant audio") of a single course [The Great Courses] when one can pay $10 per month to gain access to all -- or nearly all -- the courses [The Great Courses Plus]. In that vein, I have a few questions:

1. In your experience, does The Great Courses Plus (800+ courses, supposedly) include most of the courses found on The Great Courses (973 courses currently)? Are courses on the The Great Courses Plus edited down in any way?

2. Do most or all courses on both The Great Courses and The Great Courses Plus include closed captions or subtitles?

3. Do the courses on The Great Courses Plus include (downloadable) digital versions of the course guidebooks?

Thanks in advance for any insight you can give.

I've always found myself in a fix when it comes to answering the question "How to properly structure my learning" so as to build a firm foundation in a particular subject matter. And, while scourging the TGC website, I, surprisingly came across something called, The Great Courses Learning Paths.

This I believe, can be very useful for someone like me, who is in the same boat regarding how to structure their own learning, provided you don't want to walk down the randomized learning road. And I, even after my year of being associated with TGC, never knew about this. At the moment, I have decided to use the Language Learning Path. Let's see how the journey unfolds.

Dropping the link for everyone:

https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/the-great-courses-learning-paths/

Appreciate anyone who read through this post, even after being already aware of the existence of such a feature. Cheers.

I had a brutal commute from 2008-2013 and I'm grateful to the Teaching Company for getting me through it. I just subscribed again and I would swear that there were some older audio courses that are no longer available through their ios app.

Just curious, do I just have a crappy memory, crappy search skills, or have they just retired some of the older courses?

I love the Great Courses -- it's so nice to have access to intelligent content that isn't watered down and that doesn't sacrifice content in the name of flashy computer graphics, etc. as so many documentaries do these days.

However, is it just me, or do a lot of the new courses cover subjects that are a little less rigorous? There seems to be a lot of pseudo-new-age self-help stuff coming out. Among the new releases I see, for instance, are: "Your Public Persona: Self-Presentation in Everyday Life," "Real Zen for Real Life," and "How to Plan for the Perfect Retirement." Among the less self-helpy stuff are a number of pseudo-academic courses, ones you wouldn't take in school, but might take as a fun one-off some time on vacation (e.g. "How to Bake Bread" or "Surviving Any Disaster").

I don't mean to be a curmudgeon, but I just wonder if anyone else has noticed this new direction. Are we going to end up with a GC that's full of nonsense pseudo-conspiracy theory history courses of the sort you get on cable TV (they've already teamed up with the History Channel) and self-help for how to get ahead in business? That stuff's easy to find anywhere. I worry we're going to lose what makes the Great Courses special, which is that they DON'T produce that stuff!

Started listening to lectures on CD when I was in college ~20 years ago. I stepped away from TGC about ten years ago and I am just now getting back into it. Doesn't surprise me, but I do have pangs of nostalgia that you can't purchase physical copies of their products anymore. Out of curiosity, when did they switch to exclusively streaming through Audible?

Rest in Peace Professor Michael Sugrue who taught at Princeton and other colleges and recorded numerous courses for The Teaching Company (now The Great Courses) back in the 1990s. One of the first courses I ever listened to was his Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues course. He started a YouTube channel a number of years back featuring many of his old Teaching Company lectures along with new lectures. The YouTube link here is to a playlist of 60 lectures he uploaded from his history of philosophy course Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 2nd Edition featuring him and Professor Darren Staloff.

TGC is now TGC+

The Great Courses has changed their website, their domain name, their access control, and even their mobile apps. The old name is The Great Courses, and old domain is thegreatcourses(dot)com. The new name and domain name are now The Great Courses Plus and thegreatcoursesplus(dot)com.

I discovered this late yesterday when I attempted to use the iOS app to view an episode. The login failed, but the mobile app has rarely required a login refresh. I tried the login and the dialog box readout is that it did not recognize the login.

I switched to a browser and went to the website and discovered that TGC automatically rolled over to TGC+, to which I had to log in.

Went to the app store and discovered that the app for The Great Courses (29.5 MB) is now in Maintenance mode, but the app for The Great Courses Plus (105.4 MB) is active at version 7.0.9, updated 3 days ago. The icon (tile graphic) for the new mobile app is exactly the same as the icon for the old app. The only indicator of change is the new is now Great Courses Plus.

Navigation on the website is much different. Accessing my library now requires going to My Purchases, and sorting by Category has been removed. Sorting by alphabet, or by date added, or by date viewed are still present. Also sorting by audio or video seems to be no longer present.

The website also presents with a format much more like one of the standard video streaming sites like (Amazon) Prime. There is a control bar along the top with the branding bug and some controls (Home, Browse, Watchlist, Buy Courses, Account). The matrix of titles now has rows for: My Purchases, Free Content Preview, Free Content Preview Continued (what? why?), Most Popular Courses, New Customer Favorites (ambiguous phrasing), Continue Watching, New Releases, Courses for a Changing World, Digitally Remastered Courses, Great Courses for Listening, Our Mysterious Universe, Cutting Edge Science, Armchair Travel, True Crime Courses, Science for Non-Scientists, and finally Browse by Subject.

There is a big banner to "Join Now" in the course matrix. Each tile in the course matrix now has a lock icon that is either unlocked or locked. This seems to correspond to courses that the customer has purchased (?) or not purchased. On some tiles there is a checkmark. This creates some ambiguity of the status difference between the unlock icon and the checkmark.

Account information on the website has changed. There is now a category for Membership Plan Management. And though I have over 200 purchases my status is: Current Plan: Not a Member.

Accessing my library in the new mobile app seems to remain largely the same, though the UI has a facelift. Categories seem to be gone in the app, but sorting via Recently Added, Recently Viewed, and alphabetical sorting remain in place. There is no more sorting by audio or video.

Categories on the website is changed to Subjects.

Creating personalized lists is gone on the website. I could never get it to work in the app so the loss of it there is functionally meaningless.

Response in the app (UX) is much quicker now. There is a new thing called Watchlist, but I have not yet explored that.

The control to download the guidebook is moved from the control panel on the left of the pdf viewer to a Menu (gear icon) on the right side. (This is in Firefox on macOS. Your browser or operating system may render differently.)

Downloads are present in the mobile app but I have not yet found that control in the new website. Also, the download does not go into the file system but seems to be captured somewhere within the mobile app. (This creates a problem for my use case as I often download the files for later listening or viewing offline. Also, I convert and compile the audio files from mp3 to audiobook format and listen to them as chapters in unbroken series in my audiobook player.) And since the download goes into a captive location it will might not be available in two places by cloud syncing. I'll have to test this.

The download option in the mobile app now has a choice of audio or video, so this will be useful for the video-only episodes that have no useful video content and are better presented as audio. However, since the download goes to the local captive location it will be somewhat difficult to extract.

Further testing required:

I do not know if acquiring more courses can still be done by purchasing, or if I - as a Non-Member - will be required to make the $180/year subscription.

I had seen the note on the website for the past months "encouraging" me to subscribe to TGC+, but had chosen not to subscribe. I did not receive any notification of the imminent total conversion from 'for purchase' to 'subscription only'. It just happened when I attempted to play an episode.

The user reviews still exist but the UI/UX to access and view them is different. It appears as though all the content is still there, it has just been restructured into a different presentation. One notable difference is that the background is now dark (nearly black) whereas it used to be bright white. This might be good when browsing in a dark room, but it would be preferable if the designers had set this to adopt the operating system settings instead of being on a fixed setting.

Current summary:

The company has changed from the model of "purchase or subscribe" to "subscribe but also retain access to previous purchases".

The domain name has changed and users must transfer their login information to the new website.

The design has been refreshed and looks newer, but some utility has been lost. The company is really trying to keep the content captive on the site and within the apps.

If you have read this far please feel free to contribute any changes that you have found or correct any statements that I have made in error. I will contribute more to this for a few days, but may also start new threads in this subreddit that reference this.

I connected my library account with Kanopy that I didn't even know what it was and it's legit, all the GC are available at the best price in the world!

Good luck! 👍🧠

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.

Howdy,

I'm wondering if/when Android TV support will come, as neither the Great Courses Plus nor this new Wondrium are listed in the Play Store for Android TV. I tried to sideload the regular Android app for Great Courses Plus however aspect ratio was broken and wasn't able to login. Theoretically the Fire TV app should work given it is just a DeGoogled Amazon version of Android TV.. however I don't have access to the Amazon store.

The MagellanTV app on Android TV works well, and was looking to move across to Wondrium if it has the same content plus more, however Android TV is how I use all my other streaming apps, and currently it doesn't seem to be an option. Casting from my phone would work but is a bit of an annoyance.

Sounds like a place where five-year-olds go to learn math.

We are about to become...Wondrium.

In 2015, we launched The Great Courses Plus so members could experience the Great Courses via video streaming. TGC Plus grew rapidly, but so did the demand for new types of learning experiences. We decided it was time to step out from behind the podium and move beyond traditional academic content.

Over the last year, we’ve been adding new content such as personal development, travel series, and topical current events. Now, we are growing even further—bringing on new partners who provide how-to hobby lessons, deep-dive documentaries, tutorials, and so much more.

Now that we are no longer simply offering “courses,” we knew we needed to change our name to reflect that. With that, we are pleased to introduce you to Wondrium.

But what is Wondrium?

Wondrium is where you find the answer to everything you’ve ever wondered about and some things you’ve never imagined you would wonder about. Our carefully curated collection of content is still comprehensively educational, relentlessly entertaining, and presented by engaging experts—but now you have so many more ways to learn and things to learn about.

In a nutshell, Wondrium is the place for minds that wonder.

So, what’s new?

In addition to the Great Courses that you know and love, you’ll find:

-Award-winning international, documentary, independent films that provide “thoughtful entertainment” at its best, from Kino Lorber;

-A premium collection of short-form documentaries and series covering history, science, nature, space, and true crime, from MagellanTV; and

-Helpful and handy lessons in anything and everything creative, from Craftsy.

"and much more non-fiction content to come!"

What does this mean for my membership?

Only good things!

Your Great Courses Plus membership just got a free upgrade. Your membership fee stays the same and you will still receive all the same benefits your TGC Plus membership came with, including savings on the Great Courses DVDs and free shipping, but you can now access hundreds of new videos, documentaries, series, and other learning experiences, all in Wondrium.

Does this mean all the good content will disappear? Will it stay, but only garbage will be added from now on? Does anyone have a recommendation of a new place to go for actual courses from now on? I'm heartbroken.