The Great Courses Plus

The courses on this app is phenomenal, but this app has awful connection. I can have 5G connection, and it will take over a minute of loading to play a lecture. Not only that, but you can't even back a lecture up 10 seconds without the entire thing freezing up. With all the negative feedback they are getting lately, I believe that Wondrium needs to consider the reliability of the app. You would think that a bunch of phd geniuses would at least have an app that doesn't freeze 99.99% of the time.

Based on one year's use: if you have time for videos, I would recommend. Originally I gave 5 stars for the content; I spent time with the history and philosophy courses mostly, which are excellent. However, the app remains a little buggy and now on 6.14 it still likes to open itself randomly from being entirely closed (to refresh, apparently), although less frequently than 6.13. I am usually audio-only (whilst dog walking) so I have cancelled as it is too expensive for an audio service

Edit 2022, these problems still exist: when using Chromecast: 1) The lecture series doesn't continue automatically to the next lecture when one is finished, it just shows the default "The Great Courses" screen on TV. 2) When a lecture is playing, and you press "back" on your phone (ie. not the home button), the app stops playback. Even on chromecast. 3) A lot of buffering during playback, other streaming services work fine even on 4K. 4) Can't access "feedback" to give this information.

I LOVE the great courses. However, their apps have been lagged and not well designed. One good example is that I have to click individual episodes and download them. The app designers could have provided an option to download an entire course with just one click. Also, it is hard to know if a download has started or not. Wondrium app is still buggy and laggy. Hope it soon falls into the hands of good developers and designers

Can't say I'm thrilled with the app. Yes, it allows you to access your Great Courses stuff (the primary function is fine). It does not allow for screen rotation, so video presentation is limited to whatever the width (not length) of your screen is. It has an option for audio only, so you can cut back cell data usage while you're just listening. While using cell data, it also unexpectedly pauses, skips, and decides that you're done with a lecture while there are still several minutes to go. I haven't noticed this with WiFi data, but also haven't given it a thorough testing. Probably the second-most annoying part is that the app wants to launch every time I unlock my phone. I have absolutely no idea why. TL;DR? Sure you're going to be able to get your Great Courses stuff. Aside from that, it needs a lot of work. I'd say "one star, would not recommend" except that the primary function works.

The courses on The Great Courses Plus are, well, great! The app, however, leaves a lot to be desired. The latest new issue is that the app tries to start itself up if I merely blink at the phone. Wonderful content. Horrible app. Deleting right now and will switch to just using the browser to avoid these headaches.

Good content and nice to have audio option for playing in background. App itself has some issues last position is not saved reliably when app is terminated (manually or by OS) and occasional connection issues may cause buffering / playback to stop requiring manual action to resume / restart. Edit: Since 6.1.3 update I get weird effects where the app sometimes apparently (re?)starts automatically (showing loading screen W after unlocking phone screen) this is highly undesirable.

My phone is a Samsung S20 with Android 12. Every time I wake up my phone, the Wondrium app opens. I can not find a setting for this problem in Android or the app. The app works great when using it, but this is so annoying I'm about to cancel and remove the app.

I actually look forward to the lectures which is not normal for me. It's like I'm listening to somebody tell a story rather than taking a class. I am learning so much because the lectures are so interesting.

Excellent content, but the app is a little cumbersome to use. Would be wonderful to have a dedicated Android TV app.

The library of courses from The Great Courses is great to have, but this mobile app is lacking in two quality of life features and fixes that would make it great. The first one is playback continuing after turning off the phone or putting the phone on standby. Both audio and video playback stop after pressing the power button to turn the display off. Audio playback continues for a few minutes and then stops. Video playback stops immediately. The second is keeping captions on downloaded videos.

Quite good lectures although as always a bit weighted towards the personal psychology stuff. App has a really annoying habit of when you hit continue with next lecture it starts playing the previous one that you have just watched which then takes multiple clicks to sort. I have reported this fault but nothing changed. Edit: despite what they say app still has irritating habit of playing the video you have just watched. Not very impressive. Maybe they need course on how to write software.

I love this app and the courses available but it has been randomly opening on its own and that is weird.

It is sad to see how a terrible app can just ruin the experience of mostly great content. This app is worse then the wondery app, and that is saying something. Clumsy design, not intuitiv. Stops without reason or any indication of what is going on. No play history and a subscription that costs more then Netflix and Disney combined. And the list goes on and on and on. Guys, it's 2022. What are you doing? This isn't rocket science.

The content is fantastic but there are some minor complaints. I wish there was a way to see subcategories of subjects. I also would like it if there was a feature that allowed me to view the introductions to various courses in quick succession, sort of like an educational version of TikTok. It'd be a cool way to explore different courses without having to manually search for everything.

Absolutely a great learning platform beats surfing Netflix & Prime Video trying to find something to watch. I can't begin to explain how much of a game changer this app has been. I am spending hours & hours on it everyday. My interests are history, art & art history. The content is superb and there's so much of it. I find it's old / dated on many occassions - upto 15 yrs old but the topics are universal so it doesn't matter. The only complaint: the app is clunky and could do with improvement.

Content is wonderful. But the way the entire app is designed and function is terrible. The design is confusing, difficult to search, subtitle function looks tacky, and even the intense blue color doesn't fit. The videos lag, skip, repeat, take too much time to load and quite a few more issues. I will still subscribe because the content is absolutely incredible. But I hope they put serious work into redesigning the entire platform. I hope they can learn from apps such as audible and netflix.

06/25/2021: Video plays for only a few seconds, then stops- as if "paused". To resume playing I have to click the video and press the "play" icon. Then it plays a few seconds and pauses again. This infuriating behavior occurs for both live streaming and downloaded video playback. This doesn't happen on the iPad, only on Android on my Samsung Galaxy S9+. Update: 02/12/2022. No resolution. This apps completely sux on Android, and no help from Wondrium. Just lame responses.

Basically gives you free college courses on your own time from home! If you call Wondrium (before signing up) they'll give you a code to pay 1/2 price forever! Works on my Roku, firestick, & Android. When I use on my Android, app gives you choice of video or audio only. Listening with audio allows my screen to go dark while still playing. New courses always being added, a favorite list, & great search option. A+

I'm not sure how closely related this service is supposed to be to the 'old' Teaching Company Great Courses service - 14 of the 18 courses I have previously purchased there haven't migrated across to this. But the app works fine on my tablet and phone. Edit: many of the missing courses have now been uploaded; however, the app is now much more buggy. It stops playing all the time and never remembers where I left off.

Content: 5 stars. App performance: 0 stars. Trying to cast from my phone to my Vizio TV with Chromecast/Google Assistant built in fails. On courses with the audio option it plays the audio, but on video-only courses it refuses to play. On my TV. 😒 I'm paying for this subscription specifically to use in our homeschool, so only watching it on my phone is NOT a viable option.

Very good! A lot of topics, mostly very good lectures. So far I got what I payed for.

I like this service. There doesn't seem to be another like it. While other learning apps focus on career advancement, this app is for people who just like to learn new things. I was one of those weird people who enjoyed being in class more than partying while at college, and this service captures what is like to be in class. I really enjoy being engrossed in lectures by professors who are knowledgeable and passionate about what they teach.

I was a heavy user of the previous version of this app and it was great! I love The Great Courses Plus and the app was simple but effective. Now the new version, I'll admit, is certainly more aesthetically appealing. Being able to collapse different course titles in the "Downloads" view is helpful, and I like having quick access to the PDF course guides. However, this version also took a few steps backwards: 1) Why can't we store videos on SD card anymore? Will TGC bring that back or has it been permanently removed? The videos take up a LOT of space and I was running low as it was. 2) Now all videos play with the status bar and button bar permanently visible instead of in full-screen view. Could you please at least provide a setting so users can choose whether they want full-screen or non-full-screen playback? 3) Whenever I'm downloading a video for offline playback all the images on the screen start flashing. Not a problem but annoying and looks unprofessional.

2020-04-16 (revised to 3 stars) The folks at Great Courses Plus are obviously working on improving the user experience and have made a significant progress over the past 2 weeks. The latest version of the app (version 5.2) times out less frequently and hasn't crashed on me yet. Therefore, the original 1 star review is no longer warranted. There is still room for improvement, but kudos to TGC for the progress so far. 2020-04-04 (original review) The 1-star review is for the new release of the Android app and the lack of support for it. First general problems: The app hangs, crashes, and will go into spinner mode until you exit and restart it. This happens multiple times daily. And when it's not doing those things, it can be painfully slow. I suspect much of the slowness is due to a new back-end system implemented by the Great Courses. Things have gotten substantially worse after the upgrade to the new system (when all of the device passwords were reset). Specific bugs: 1) Speaking of passwords, the Android app has a 20 character limit for the password, even though the website will allow you to configure a longer password. There's no warning about this website. I had to figure it out the hard way. 2) The app allows you to download content so you don't have to stream and incur data plan charges. But inexplicably (I think because they never tested this), when you start to play downloaded content while not connected to wi-fi, you get a pop-up warning you that you need to change settings to allow data streaming because you're not connected to wi-fi. But this is the whole point of downloading content. And if you try to exit popup, you have either changed the setting (which I don't want to do - I downloaded the content because I *don't* want to stream over my data plan) or you haven't changed it and playback stops. So I just leave the dialog open and then app eventually crashes once I'm back in wi-fi range. Great... I haven't received a response to any of my recent attempts to contact Customer Service. As a long-time customer of The Teaching Company / The Great Courses (since the time when courses were sent out on cassette tapes) this is disappointing. They used to have very good, responsive customer service. It's a shame because the app and customer service are so bad that I'm ready to cancel.