Comments on: God and Man at DIY U

By: Blake

Blake — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:25:49 +0000

But the idea that I’m getting an “education” from doing that, as opposed to learning some more information in a particular field of interest, is just really wrongheaded.

And did you utilize all the additional content, follow the recommended links and do all the additional reading?

If you did, I am sure you got more out of the course than most college students would get out of a similar course.

If I remember right, you’re a homeschooling parent (?)….you must be aware that the Great Courses are not the only or even the best resources out there.

Many schools are finding ways to make their content available.

The only thing missing is a reliable way to document what one has learned. As long as there is no formal gatekeeper process, schools will be necessary for the piece of paper – even as they are increasingly failing to back their own currency with anything real.

By: pentamom

pentamom — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:05:59 +0000

I have gone through a few Great Courses, one in linguistics and a couple in history, and loved them.

But the idea that I’m getting an “education” from doing that, as opposed to learning some more information in a particular field of interest, is just really wrongheaded.

I know a ton more about linguistics than I knew before, and find it fascinating, and am able to apply it ways I couldn’t before, but I would never imagine myself claiming that I had been “educated” in linguistics in any way comparable to a university education in it, even a poor one.

But I don’t quite like the Internet recipes/eating analogy — perhaps a better one would be Internet recipes/top-level gourmet chefs. Thanks to recipes more widely available than ever, we can all attempt, and many of us pull off, those recipes that the top-level chefs use. The idea that it makes us equivalent to those chefs is risible.

By: Craig Payne

Craig Payne — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:50:40 +0000

I agree, of course. But I have to quibble (just a bit) and throw out there that in my experience, about half of the “superb Great Courses series” in my field (theology, philosophy) contain seriously misleading content. Some are great (Fr. Koterski, thank you if you are reading this). But some are the product of a professor with a fixation or two, presenting their fixations as settled fact.

That’s not a problem if you are taking a university course; you have other professors, and you learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. But if the Great Courses series, like the Wikipedia article taken to a higher level, is your primary or only source of information on a topic, you could run into problems.

Students like the ease of access to DIY U. However, my impression is that they really do want an educated person to tell them, “This is what is important: read this, do this.” They want professors, in other words, not self-directed studies.