The Great Courses

Audio quality is great, never encountered a bug, runs fine behind other apps. The one thing I'd fix is this: on Android, when you open the app after having closed it with a course open, the lectures fail to load and you have to exit to menu and go back into the course in order to listen further. And it'd be great if it automatically paused when I remove my headphones, like Spotify does. Overall very good, however.

App works well on my Android phone (Galaxy 7). It easily keeps track of my progress in several courses. I load lectures and view them on the way to work when not driving (van pool). I have streamed a few lectures and didn't see any difference (no spooling lags). That may be due to 4G network more than App, so ymmv. The best thing is that the app doesn't get in the way of learning.

Used on my Samsung. The good: Audio is great. Nice display of courses. Remembers your place. The bad: The buttons for back and forward 10 seconds are too close and I frequently end up going back to the beginning of the chapter. Stick them at the bottom? Goes from too soft to too loud in one step. Smaller increments? It appears that the app wants to check in with Great Courses when I open it. That doesn't work when I'm out walking or in the gym. Have to open it when I'm home and connected to Wi-Fi. Am I missing a setting? But love the courses!

I can't be clearer because I cannot use it with out going thru the play store. My icon for the old one disappeared when I updated and tech has not responded to tell me where it went. I love the courses, but guys can you get an app that works.

Love the Great Courses but huge pet peeve is the mandatory "landscape" orientation of the app on my tablet and the inaccessible course outlines. Even when my tablet is locked in portrait orientation the app opens in landscape and will not operate in portrait. I have not had this problem with my phone so not sure why it's this way on the tablet. I know it sounds like a small thing but it's really annoying. Especially when trying to read the course outlines which do not load properly on my phone or tablet. The only way I have been able to read the course outlines is on my computer by logging into the website. Ideally one could refer to a course outline while listening to a lecture but that is not the case. Otherwise the new update seems to be running pretty well.

Why in the world would you put a character limit on the password field? I am not able to log in without going to the website to change mu password. This is just poor UX. Please remove the character limit as there's no such thing as a password that is too long.

Cancelled shortly after my free trial started. After that could not even sign on and my email was not recognized? A month goes by, I look at my bank statement and see that I am charged. For what!? I then sign on and cancel, and should be good till end of the month. Instead, I try and sign on again and my email is invalid!!?? I was just charged, how could it be invalid. I called and requested a refund. The tech team is no good. Content is good though. But when you mess with people's money, get charged and then cannot even use it... Then we have problems.

Love Great Courses - hate this app! It continually disconnects during downloads even though I have an excellent Wi-Fi signal. Restarts, reboots, nothing seems to help - very frustrating. I'm operating on Moto G4 with Android 7.0 and Great Courses app 5.1. Please help!

Well thought out interface, and as they say, extremely qualified instructors, with valuable knowledge. Their marketing bothers me. The price you pay is well worth it, but telling you it 75% or so "on sale" all time is disengenuous.

Better than last version, but chokes when you use it offline. If you download courses on your phone, you should be able to watch them, and ambiguous messaging when I watch courses while drifting in and out of wifi coverage makes me wonder if the app is streaming the downloaded courses unless I'm in airplane mode.

The courses are great, the app is average. Often starts reloading without apparent need and throws you back into home screen. The sync is slow and inefficient. Rather than storing current data locally the app seems to rely entirely on sync over internet, and when the sync fails (which is annoyingly frequent) the local info, such as last listening point is lost. A good off-line mode is needed for this app - BADLY needed.

I can't login on android nor iPad (only web works), I changed the password to be shorter (14) and removed additional characters but no luck, horrible XP! Why no password description is there? pass length should be 200+ Add some login tests damn -it :)

Massive improvements since I gave 1 star 2 years ago. The player is better, with the fine grained 10s control, and allows downloads so as to play in your external favorite player. I have some trouble with the course book download, but not a big worry for me.

The app is improving after the missteps of last year. The BT integration was slightly fixed with the last update, it still has quite a way to go before it is where it needs to be and where it was before it was broken last year. It still will not register the title of the lecture with my car, it only occasionally will start automatically when I get in my car, and I still can only occasionally control it with ant of my BT devices (i.e., my car, my headphones, or my BT speakers). It also crashes a lot, sometimes in the middle of playing a lecture and it forgets where it was before it crashed so when you restart it you have to relisten to parts you've heard already; not good while driving.

Why I did not about Great Courses 20 years ago? I would, in gargantuan like fashion, gobble course after course. I will try my best to catch up. Thanks for the opportunity!

I love Great Courses....but....lately I can't access downloaded lectures through the app. Makes no sense to be blocked from app with "check Internet connection" when trying to listen to a downloaded lecture, and process in to the application is blocked.

A dozen each free audio and video​ courses, but not a single clue anywhere to be found on accessing paid courses via this app. Nice long useless tutorial at the beginning though. Waste of time.

The app is great, and I love being able to listen to my lectures on my phone. The only thing I would like to see improved would be a rewind 30-second button on the menu list when I'm Listening to a lecture without having to open the app. Also, I would love for that app to pause when I pull my headphones which is a pretty standard feature on every other audio app that I know of.

Much improved. It's still lacks some basic things, such as the ability to scan forward or backward by variable amounts. Most important, it is impossible to turn off the screen and put your phone in your pocket and continue listening. Turning off the screen turns off the app.

The interface is simple and clean. It moves to the next lecture automatically which is convenient and safe while driving. (Not all courseware products do.) My one complaint is that if you have downloaded content it should not force you to sign in when no Internet connection is detected, if you have exited out at some point. This was inconvenient and unsafe while driving in a remote area, as it took dozens of retries before finding a non-roaming signal. Also noted that hitting the ten second back button several times will suddenly jump to the start.

Can we get a download that can be burned to a dvd (image iso file) so we can play it on a did player? Downloads are buggy. Transferred from pc to android tablet but wouldn't play. Content is good if you can get to it!

I love the courses and everything about it except i cant figure oit how to project it onto a bigger screen than my phone. It looks like i shouls be able to but it wont let me and there are no inatructions to help. Everything else is amazing and the teachers are ao helpful.

Dry and often boring lecture format. More videos or additional media to make it more exciting would help. Already been through lectures at university--was hoping for more fun and engaging presentations.

I enjoy using this app. It is easy to download and use. I am not quite so certain about the notes. I have some difficulties with them, but that is not too important to me . I can easily access them on my computer. Thanks for such a handy app!

The spelling on the first screen when opening the program was in correct. So, if that cannot be easily seen and handled, I have no faith that anything else will work. So I removed it.

Half the time it either takes several minutes to start streaming, or flubs up and doesn't work at all. When it works correctly I love it.

Response to Dev: I'll be eagerly waiting for the Plus version to be available in that case. I love the content on your website and want it to be easily accessible for me on my android too. The stars shall be added then. Original review: Signed up for TGC+ on the web as a free trial. However, the mobile app does not recognize my email and let me create another account with the same credentials of my existing account!?! An app and a content that markets itself as "take everywhere you go", this is absurd. Ratings will stand till the issue is fixed. I notice that others have faced similar issues as well.

Great app, does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. Syncing of playback positions between account on computer/website and app would be brilliant (or am I missing something and that exists already?)

Great app! Thank you for adding offline viewing! Now please allow download of different resolution videos. Sometimes it does not save my last spot but saves where I was two times before. Can you add a manual bookmark option? Can you also add the option to play at different speeds such as .75x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, and 2x?

This app is trouble free, works wonderfully and I enjoy listening/watching The Great Courses. Will drain my phone's battery if I forget to stop app

Wow... What a terrible UX. After creating an account I need to sign in again? You need to take a "great" course on developing a mobile signups/login page. No spaces allowed in the password indicates the back-end of this app is an unsecured mess as well. And inside the app there is no discover or explore section, the user is just expected to randomly search for things without any guidance. These amateurish UX decisions don't inspire confidence in the quality of education this app may provide. I can't even be bothered to look around further.

Keeps telling me that my email and password are not recognized. Funnily, they work on my laptop.

There are only 24 lectures. Am I missing something?? I also just searched for space, moon, conscious, happiness, evil, and truth... No results found. Not sure if I'm doing this wrong??

Frequently tells me I have no downloaded content. I mist exit the app and sometimes restart my phone before it "finds" my courses. I enjoy the courses but the app bugs make it annoying.

I love having the courses as a constant companion to enjoy anytime. Works seamlessly with my android phone and tablet and love it on my laptop. Good audio and clear videos. Can have several courses followed as a Montage of learning rather than completing one before I can begin another. Well done!

There are no courses in the app. I can understand that you would want to focus on the new Great Courses Plus app, but take the original off of the app store if you're not going to have any content on it

After downloading the app there is no access the catalog. If you do not have a course already there is no way to download it thru the app. Hope this is an issue with my app only.

It's an OK app. Crashes sometimes. However it really needs to be supported by Android Auto.

Great app but on my Alcatel Pulsar the external storage option does not work when external card present and you switch app to use it. The app won't accept the switch so I use another download app for external storage. Would be great if app could do this on my phone.

I cannot find a course list. I typed in five different subject and they all came back with no results. I tried even historical figures in a couple lectures and I received when I was in college and nothing came back all results were negative God damn joke