The Teaching Company
The Teaching Company
The Teaching Company is an American company that produces recordings of lectures by university professors. The professors create courses specially for the company; they are then offered for sale in audiotape, CD, VHS, DVD, MPEG-4, and MP3 formats.
The company was founded in 1990 by Thomas M. Rollins, a graduate of Harvard Law School who noticed the effectiveness of videotapes in learning during his study. He then sought out top professors to create special courses for sale to the educated public.
As of 2005, the company offers around 175 courses in the following areas: Fine Arts, History, Science, Mathematics, Literature, English Language, Philosophy, Religion, Social Science, Business, and Economics.
Course offerings tend to be survey courses, for interested laypeople, rather than in-depth examinations. However, some courses are quite broad running as long as 84 45-minute lectures.
There is also a series for high school students.