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MasterClass is using celebrity and production value as an attractant, but accomplishment in a field does not necessarily equate to expertise and certainly doesn
by aksss 6y ago
MasterClass is using celebrity and production value as an attractant, but accomplishment in a field does not necessarily equate to expertise and certainly doesn't imply any significant teaching ability.
MasterClass brings you close to recognized greats, but to an extent your learning will be more about _them_ and only tangentially about the field of interest. There are some MasterClass episodes conveying very practical knowledge - typically the cooking ones - but again I'd call this a different thing than really learning about cooking (theory, law, etc).
Systemically understanding a field of interest is a different endeavor requiring more rigor. The Great Courses product is probably the more rigorous (categorically similar) educational tool in comparison to MasterClass. It has less production value (though more than sufficient) and the lectures are from obscure though academically recognized authorities rather than curated celebrities.
_IF goal is to:_
Really learn a new field or skill during the pandemic = The Great Courses.
Watch autobiopic on recognized authority = MasterClass.
For the record, I have both and am affiliated with neither.
- jkhdigital 6y ago+1 for The Great Courses, at least the few that I’ve picked up on Audible. I listened to a course entitled Law School for Everyone that is 25 hours of four different law professors giving a very clear and coherent introduction to law. It was worth at least 10x the cost of the Audible credit, and I probably only used 1/2 credit after picking it up during a 2-for-1 sale.
- mlacks 6y agoThanks, didn't realize the great courses were available on audible. Reduces the friction just that much more.
- aksss 6y agoThey also have a Roku channel and an iPhone app. The iphone app lets you do audio only to cut down on BW. But with a course like Understanding Greek and Roman Technology (one of my all-time faves), the video is pretty invaluable. https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/understanding-greek-and-roman-technology https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/understanding-greek-and-...
- ganstyles 6y agoWow, same here. I have an audible membership and several unused credits. After browsing the great courses (which I hadn't heard of before this), definitely going to try one.
- SilasHaslam 6y agoThe Great Courses is also available on Kanopy, if your library or university has a subscription.
- rammy1234 6y ago+1 for this. Use your library. They are awesome.
- Breza 6y agoThis is a game changer! Thank you for letting me know. Kanopy is a deeply underapprciated gem.
- Nerada 6y agoI had no idea I had access to this, thank you!
- curiousigor 6y agoIt also doesn't use your Kanopy credits, which is an added bonus also, so you can basically watch however many as you want at any time.
- fermienrico 6y ago+1 Great Courses. Often taught by university professors and academically respected people. I just went through the Hinduism course and it was an amazingly deep insight into how the country of India works and worked in the past when it comes to social fabric as religion is quite tightly weaved into the culture. It is much much better than any of this fancy high production value celebrity tabloid thing we call "MasterClass". Nothing masterful about it.
- jagannathtech 6y agoI don't know about this particular course but almost anything on Hinduism comes with huge biases from western institutions. This is explained in the book 'Academic Hinduphobia' available recently as a free PDF. I would recommend reading the book 'Being Different' by Rajiv Malhotra to balance out any such courses on Hinduism. Disclaimer - Indian hindu
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI don't think this deserved to be downvoted. Foreign analysis of a local phenomenon always has a slant. It can't be avoided. Explication of local culture in a foreign language for the benefit of foreigners will also have a slant. But it will be a very different slant, and it's a lot more accessible than the native materials. If the goal is "deep insight into how India works [today]", then Being Different is probably a pretty valuable thing to read even if the scholarship is shoddy. (On which question I have no opinion whatever.)
- unmole 6y agoI'm quite skeptical that any kind of deep insight can come from reading a prototypical Bharat Tyagi[0]. Reading Swami Vivekananda or even Gandhi would be a far better use of time. 0: https://devdutt.com/articles/hiss-of-the-pio-bharat-tyagi/ https://devdutt.com/articles/hiss-of-the-pio-bharat-tyagi/
- aksss 6y agoI think when the comment said basically "[I have no exposure to or experience with the course you're referring to but let's assume it's biased]", it attracts downvotes. This isn't "foreign analysis", in context it's just a proudly uninformed opinion.
- dpau 6y agoOne offering from The Great Courses that the HN crowd might appreciate is "Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature": https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/great-utopian-and-dystopian-works-of-literature.html https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/great-utopian-and-dy... The professor is excellent.
- kop316 6y agoI'll chime in for The Great Courses too! I have learned history, how to cook, literature, music theory, among other topics from it. I highly recommend them.
- loco5niner 6y agoMy local library has tons of Great Courses available as audio books. Check the Libby app and Overdrive (same company).
- chrisseaton 6y agoIt does literally call itself 'master class' - a class with a master - so it's pretty upfront about this.
- dmoy 6y agoYes I agree - this sounds exactly like what you get from e.g. a master class in music. There's no promise that the person you watch is any good at teaching, but they're gonna be pretty good at doing the thing. A master class isn't supposed to give you foundational or comprehensive knowledge about a thing. A master class is supposed to a) give you some random-ish insights from an expert b) be marketing for the expert You don't go into a masterclass not knowing how to do XYZ and then leave knowing how to do it. You go into a masterclass with a fairly good base knowledge of XYZ, and then leave knowing a few neat expert-level details about a particular subset of XYZ, but without any practice on actually doing it yourself (unless you're the demo student, but in that case you're probably also nearly an expert yourself).
- ISL 6y agoOne of the key awesome things about traditional masterclasses: You get to ask the master questions.
- zetazzed 6y agoAgreed that Great Courses has a sweet spot... they bring in great professors who are particularly engaging and good at teaching. So, much more engaging than Coursera on average but still a high level of expertise. For a tough technical subject, the lack of exercises makes GC a poor fit, but for high-quality "edutainment," I think it's a perfect balance. (I particularly liked this class on the Etruscans https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-mysterious-etruscans.html https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-mysterious-etrus...) If an author/artist/celebrity you particularly love is on MasterClass, it may still be worthwhile to pay for access to their bit. But you learn much less. I took the Annie Leibovitz photography class and absolutely enjoyed it. I still think about a few things she said. But I don't think it improved my photo portraiture skills at all. If anything, it sort of demoralized me to see the incredible level of input required for portraiture at her level.
- 8note 6y agoThey do have Tony Trishka for banjo, who's known as the banjo teacher
- baddox 6y agoI honestly don't think that teaching ability is that important for MasterClass, because I think the videos are primarily consumed for entertainment and creative inspiration, and less for earnestly learning a skill. Charisma and/or starpower, along with excellent production values, is probably exactly what they want and what they need. It's not Khan Academy. That's certainly how I consume lots of similar educational content. I watch lots of videos of people who are passionate and experienced in some discipline simply talking about, demonstrating, or teaching that discipline, even when I have little or no interest in actually learning the discipline myself. For me it's cooking, 3d modeling, filmmaking and photography, musicianship, home construction, electronics, bushcraft and wilderness survival, and many more that I can't recall at the moment.
- FireBeyond 6y agoI would agree with that, and think it is valuable in itself. But the pedant in me gets frustrated at that, combined with the whole "I'm X, and I'm going to teach you Y".
- lonelappde 6y agoLike Colbert's truthiness, MC is educationaliness. Infotainment.
- xtiansimon 6y agoThere is a pedagogical precedent for working professionals sharing their craft.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoI agree very much. I am an amateur club chess player and watching the Garry Kasparov MasterClass was painful. It’s a bunch of self-aggrandizing bluster meant to make it seem like a genius is at work, with all this hemming and hawing and grunting and pointing obtusely at this square then that square. Absolutely no connection to the way a skilled player calculates moves, not even Kasparov himself when he played competitively. On top of this, in most of it, he’s surrounded by children who are clearly instructed to act like their mind is blown by some epiphany if grunting and pointing at some squares.
- sitkack 6y agoBut I do that with code, am I the Kasparov of Cloud?
- jedberg 6y ago> but accomplishment in a field does not necessarily equate to expertise and certainly doesn't imply any significant teaching ability. This is interesting, because you could make the same assessment about famous professors at famous institutions. There were definitely professors that I had that were well known for their research, but were awful at teaching.
- jankyxenon 6y agoWhat I'm hearing is: Great Courses for technical content and MasterClass for motivation. Progress may require different weights of the two for different people.
- dpeck 6y agoSpot on. Though I’d say for the cooking masterclasses they meld a little closer towards the middle.
- FireBeyond 6y agoOne of the biggest things I learned from the Photography with Annie Liebowitz MasterClass is that Annie very seldomly presses the shutter or even looks through the viewfinder - she has an assistant that does camera operation, hooked up to a monitor. Then she has a digital editor that does all the post-processing and editing. She'd more accurately be referred to as a creative director. In the class, she even says, "I don't even know what camera or lenses I use." You don't have to be a gearhead, and there's very little to photography that should consider the gear important, but unless exaggerated for effect, this says something. "Learn photography from someone who couldn't tell you the camera her assistant operates for her".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- keiferski 6y agoThere is a lesson there, even if it’s unintentional: successful photographers don’t obsess over the technical details. Photography is sometimes better thought of as ‘image-making with a camera’ than ‘pointing a camera and pressing shoot.’
- gexla 6y agoI assume her assistant does the obsessing for her.
- keiferski 6y agoNot really the point I’m making. Plenty of successful photographers have become successful by taking interesting photos, not by being a technical wizard of their camera.
- hnick 6y agoAn appropriate quote you've probably heard: "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." ― Henri Cartier-Bresson You can get some nice stuff with just an iPhone these days, but there's probably a risk of the software making it look very samey.
- aiscapehumanity 6y agoGreat courses or brilliant honestly
- Xcelerate 6y ago> but again I'd call this a different thing than really learning about cooking This is one of the things that has baffled me a bit. I’ve really gotten into cooking lately and learned a lot about the techniques of Michelin starred chefs. Things like cooking vegetables sous vide in aromatic court bouillon followed by searing over binchotan. Or A/B testing the optimal number of days to grill a beet over low heat. Or even starch retrograding potatoes at a precise temperature in their skins followed by passing the final result through a lab grade #60 sieve for ultra smooth pomme purée. I watched the Masterclass snippet for Thomas Keller and nothing like that is in the video. Instead, it’s “add herbs to the water and brine the chicken”. I can find this anywhere on the internet. I want the real stuff. Surely Thomas Keller doesn’t want people to think his life’s work is so easy that it can be learned overnight. It’s the same with Gordon Ramsay. Almost all of his popular videos for how to cook are different than what his restaurants actually do. He even has two YouTube videos with conflicting instructions on how to cook a steak. I’m not sure if it’s just specific to cooking, but it seems like the experts massively tone down what they are best at for the masses, and it’s a bit disappointing because I want to learn how they actually do it in practice. My best attempt to learn is to instead dig through archive.org for old blog posts from some of these world renowned chefs before they became famous; you can often find some insight into how they actually think about cooking. Serious Eats, Cooks Illustrated, and Chefsteps are also good resources, but I’m not sure they go quite to the obsessive level of world class cooking (Chefsteps used to, but their recent work seems scaled back a bit for some reason.)
- papeda 6y agoYou may be interested in a long series of YouTube videos put out by Chicago Reader called Key Ingredient. In each video a different pro cook from Chicago makes a dish with a different key ingredient chosen for them by the previous episode's cook. Each video is short, maybe 5min, but is pretty dense with info about coming up with a dish. And you get to see little snippets of pro cooks putting stuff together in quiet hours outside of service, how they move and what they do without time pressures, experimenting with execution. Even better: most of the cooks are not yet famous. Michael Carlsen's episode is one of my favorites: https://youtu.be/3hTW9jfoCBU https://youtu.be/3hTW9jfoCBU