Are the Teaching Company courses rigorous enough for a credit all by themselves

[SheWhoWaits]

Ds (10th grade) Did the Joy of Thinking course this year. I was planning to give him a math credit for it but I'm having second thoughts. It was 24 lectures plus 2-4 exercises for each lecture and some textbook reading. Is that enough? If not, what would you do to beef it up?

[periwinkle]

Ds watched the lectures from Starbird and Burger on mathematical thinking...I'd have to go check to see the actual name of the course. I bought the accompanying text called The Heart of Mathematics, and he read through certain chapters and worked some of the problems.

 

I gave him a half credit on his transcript (he completed it over one semester).

[periwinkle]

Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas

 

The course is certainly rigorous enough...I gave the half credit based on the time involved on my ds's part. Do you have the textbook? If you complete most of it, I think the course would surely be worth a full credit.

[SheWhoWaits]

We have the textbook, but he only read the parts assigned in the course guide for the DVDs. He also only did the problems from the course guide, not the other problems from the textbook.

[Alphabetika]

I actually emailed the Teaching Company about this, because I was curious to know whether they had assigned basic credit values to their courses. They were quick to say that they don't award credit (which wasn't what I was asking, but perhaps they get that question a lot) and that the state-to-state standards are so different that they cannot say what credit they'd assign.

 

My dd and I are using the History of the English Language, which is 18 hours of instruction plus a few questions for each lecture (30 minutes each). We are taking an hour to an hour and a half on each lecture, between rewinding to re-listen, plus discussing after the lecture. I will also probably have her write some short essays on topics of interest within the course. I think she should get a 1/2 credit in English for this, so that's what I'm going to give her; the information is high-level and she is grasping it and discussing it well so far. I hope that seems reasonable, because I'm quite new at the credit thing. I'll be interested to hear what others say.

[Michelle in MO]

and the amount of time involved in using the course and what supplements you used. For example, I tend to think of a credit as ranging between 120 hours (on the low end) to 180 hours (on the higher end). So, if I spent 60 to 90 hours listening to the lectures, discussing the material, reading and writing about supplementary material, then I would have no trouble assigning half of a credit.

 

One thing I've read on these forums, but personally have no experience with, is that too many English credits on a child's transcripts may ring some alarm bells with some colleges. For example, my oldest and middle daughters had approximately 450 hours last year in English, between Omnibus II, writing for Omnibus II plus three writing tutorials through Cindy Marsch, vocabulary study (Vocabulary from the Classical Roots and Wordly Wise), and grammar (Abeka). This year I gave them two credits each in English: one for grammar, vocabulary, and writing, and one that I labeled "Medieval Literature". I feel totally justified in giving them at least two credits. In my mind, they probably earned at least three credits, but I'm a little leary to assign too many English credits for the aforementioned reason.

 

I hope this helps. Anyone else out there have experience with this?

 

I do agree that the Teaching Company courses tend to be pretty high-level. The History of the English Language by Seth Lerer is fascinating and I think it's definitely college-level; probably a course in the 3XXX range. And, I think you're approaching it with wisdom, in working with the material in addition to listening to it.