For more than a century, lectures have played a central role in many, if not most, college classes. In some cases, such monologues show signs of solid research, careful composition, and deliberate delivery. In others, they consist of little more than off-hand commentary upon notes scribbled in haste in days of yore, or, what is worse, the reading of slides provided with the teacher’s edition of a textbook.
If he shows up for every class, a student enrolled in a typical college course attends two lectures a week for fifteen weeks. Thus, if each talk goes on for ninety minutes, the student will be able to listen to forty-five hours of learned discourse. (If, as is common, each lecture lasts for seventy-five minutes, then the total listening time is reduced to thirty-seven and a half hours.)
The paragon of course-like podcasts, Mike Duncan’s History of Rome, provides seventy-three hours’ worth of content. My personal favorite, David Crowther’s The History of England Podcast, is not yet finished. However, with nearly four hundred years to go, Mr. Crowther has published three-hundred and eighty episodes, each of which weighs in at forty or so minutes. (For those with no well-traveled envelopes or other means of quick computation close at hand, that translates to a hundred and eighty-six hours of well-informed, well-organized, and well-spoken exposition.)
With these things in mind, consider the case of a long-haul truck driver who has acquired the habit of playing podcasts in his rig. In two forty-hour work weeks, he can listen to the entirety of the History of Rome, thereby enjoying the equivalent, at least in terms of time and topic, of all of the lectures of two undergraduate courses on Roman history. Better yet, he exercises full control over the program: repeating, skipping, slowing down, and speeding up segments as he sees fit.
There is, of course, more to a college course than lectures. Thus, in the weeks to come, I will post articles about techniques that autodidacts can use to replicate such things as readings, revision, discussing groups, papers, and, marvelous to say, examinations.
Oh dear, two more extensive podcasts on my backlog. Thanks(!)
I just checked out the Crowther site; 401 lectures recorded to date, with about 200 more projected. That should keep me busy for a bit.