Open Syllabus Project

Last updated

Open Syllabus Project
Open Syllabus Logo.png
Screenshot
Screenshot of the Open Syllabus Project.png
Homepage on 3 October 2022
Type of business 501(c)(3) corporation [1]
Type of site
 Digital database
Available inEnglish
Headquarters New York City, U.S. [1]
Country of originUnited States
Area servedWorldwide
OwnerOpen Syllabus Inc. [1]
PresidentJoe Karaganis
Managing director Joe Karaganis
Key people
Industry Educational research
Revenue Increase2.svg $1,942,525 (2020) [1]
Total assets Increase2.svg $1,579,393 (2020) [1]
EmployeesIncrease2.svg 5 (2020) [1]
URL opensyllabus.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationNone
LaunchedJanuary 2016;9 years ago (2016-01)
Current statusActive
OCLC  number 973953893
According to their 2020 Form 990. [1]

The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an online open-source platform that catalogs and analyzes millions of college syllabi. [3] Founded by researchers from the American Assembly at Columbia University, the OSP has amassed the most extensive collection of searchable syllabi. Since its beta launch in 2016, the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi from over 80 countries, primarily by scraping publicly accessible university websites. The project is directed by Joe Karaganis.

Contents

History

The OSP was formed by a group of data scientists, sociologists, and digital-humanities researchers at the American Assembly, a public-policy institute based at Columbia University. The OSP was partly funded by the Sloan Foundation and the Arcadia Fund. [4] Joe Karaganis, former vice-president of the American Assembly, serves as the project director of the OSP. [5] The project builds on prior attempts to archive syllabi, such as H-Net, MIT OpenCourseWare, and historian Dan Cohen's defunct Syllabus Finder website (Cohen now sits on the OSP's advisory board). [6] The OSP became a non-profit and independent of the American Assembly in November 2019. [7]

In January 2016, the OSP launched a beta version of their "Syllabus Explorer," which they had collected data for since 2013. The Syllabus Explorer allows users to browse and search texts from over one million college course syllabi. [8] The OSP launched a more comprehensive version 2.0 of the Syllabus Explorer in July 2019. The newer version includes an interactive visualization that displays texts as dots on a knowledge map. [9] [10] As of 2022, the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi. [11] The Syllabus Explorer represents the "largest collection of searchable syllabi ever amassed." [12]

Methodology

The OSP has collected syllabi data from over 80 countries [13] dating to 2000. [4] The syllabi stem from over 4,000 worldwide institutions. [14] Most of the OSP's data originates from the United States. Canada, Australia, and the U.K also have large datasets. [10]

The OSP primarily collects syllabi by scraping publicly accessible university websites. [12] The OSP also allows syllabi submissions from faculty, students, and administrators. [15] The OSP developers use machine learning and natural language processing to extract metadata from such syllabi. [16] Since only metadata is collected, no individual syllabus or personal identifying information is found in the OSP database. [17] The OSP classifies the syllabi into 62 subject fields –corresponding to the U.S. Department of Education's Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP). [12] Additionally, the OSP assigns each text a "teaching score" from 0–100. This score represents the text's percentile rank among citations in the total citation count and is a numerical indicator of the relative frequency of which a particular work is taught. [18] The OSP also has data on which texts are most likely to be assigned together. [19]

The developers behind the OSP admit that the database is incomplete and likely contains "a fair number of errors." [20] Karaganis estimates that 80–100 million syllabi exist in the United States alone. The OSP is unable to access syllabi behind private course-management software like Blackboard. [4]

Notable findings

A chart, with data from the Open Syllabus Project, showing the most assigned books in college from each of the 50 U.S. states. Most assigned college book in every state.png
A chart, with data from the Open Syllabus Project, showing the most assigned books in college from each of the 50 U.S. states.

Anthropology

Using data from the OSP, anthropologist Laurence Ralph uncovered that black anthropologists are "woefully under-represented in (if not erased from) most anthropology syllabi." [21] Black authors wrote less than 1 percent of the top 1,000 assigned works. [22]

Economics

The database indicates Greg Mankiw is the most frequently cited author for college economics courses. [23]

English literature

The OSP found that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the most widely taught novel in college courses. [24] [25] [26] Additionally, the majority of novels published after 1945 taught in English classes were historical fiction. [27]

Female writers

The most read female writer on college campuses is Kate L. Turabian for her A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations . [28] [29] Turabian is followed by Diana Hacker, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, and Virginia Woolf. [30] [31]

Film

The most assigned film according to the OSP is the 1929 Soviet documentary film, Man with a Movie Camera. English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock is the most assigned director in college courses. [32]

History

Historians George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi's America: A Narrative History is the number one assigned textbook for history, followed by Anne Moody's memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi . [33]

Philosophy

The most assigned texts in the field of philosophy include Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism , and Plato's Republic . [34] [35] Plato's Republic was also the second most assigned text in universities in the English-speaking world (only behind Strunk and White's Elements of Style ). [34]

Physics

David Halliday's et al. Fundamentals of Physics is the number one ranked physics textbook in the OSP's database. [36]

Political science

Data from the OSP indicates that the dominant political science texts are written almost exclusively by white men and scholars based in the West. [37] In the top 200 most-frequently assigned works, 15 are authored by at least one woman. [38]

Public administration

American president Woodrow Wilson's article "The Study of Administration" was the most frequently assigned text in public affairs and administration syllabi. [39]

Reception

According to William Germano et al., the OSP is a "fascinating resource but is also prone to misrepresenting or at least distracting us from the most important business of a syllabus: communicating with students." [40]

Historian William Caferro remarks that the OSP is a "tacit experience of sharing, but a useful one." [41]

English professor Bart Beaty writes that, "Despite the many reservations about the completeness of its data, the OSP provides a rare opportunity for scholars to move beyond the anecdotal in discussions of canon-formation in teaching." [42]

Media theorist Elizabeth Losh opines that "big data approaches", like the OSP, may "raise troubling questions for instructors about informed consent, pedagogical privacy, and quantified metrics." [43]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ McClure also serves as the project's Chief Technologist. [2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Open Syllabus Inc". ProPublica . September 14, 2022. Retrieved September 28, 2022.
  2. ↑ "People". Open Syllabus Project. Retrieved September 30, 2022.
  3. ↑ M. Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha; Pierre, Jemima (March 2020). "Special Section: Anthropology of White Supremacy". American Anthropologist . 122 (1). Wiley-Blackwell: 6. doi:10.1111/aman.13351. ISSN   0002-7294. S2CID   213556202.
  4. 1 2 3 Nowogrodzki, Anna (October 31, 2016). "Mining the secrets of college syllabuses". Nature . 539 (7627): 125–126. Bibcode:2016Natur.539..125N. doi: 10.1038/539125a . ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   27808216. S2CID   4466400.
  5. ↑ Herrera, Jack (April 18, 2016). "Open Syllabus Project gives empirical insight into curriculum debates". The Stanford Daily . Retrieved September 30, 2022.
  6. ↑ Noonan, Daniel W. (2015). "Does Size Matter in the Digital Age? Reappraisal Considerations for Syllabi". Archival Issues . 37 (1): 16. ISSN   1067-4993. JSTOR   24590114.
  7. ↑ "The Open Syllabus Project". The American Assembly . January 30, 2016. Retrieved September 30, 2022.
  8. ↑ Ward, Alex (February 26, 2016). "Open Syllabus Project Releases Syllabus Explorer". Chicago Maroon . Retrieved September 30, 2022.
  9. ↑ Young, Jeffrey R. (July 19, 2019). "How a Database of 6 Million Syllabi Could Spawn a New Measure of Scholarly Impact". EdSurge . Retrieved October 1, 2022.
  10. 1 2 Schwab, Katharine (July 16, 2019). "This historic map of 6 million syllabi reveals how college is changing". Fast Company . Archived from the original on March 8, 2022.
  11. ↑ Graham, Shawn; Milligan, Ian; Weingart, Scott B.; Martin, Kimberley (2022). Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian's Macroscope (2nd ed.). World Scientific. p. 13. doi:10.1142/p981. ISBN   978-981-12-4305-9. S2CID   109639779.
  12. 1 2 3 Hubbard, David E.; Vaaler, Alyson (January 1, 2021). "An exploratory study of library science journal articles in syllabi". The Journal of Academic Librarianship . 47 (1). Elsevier: 102261. doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2020.102261. ISSN   0099-1333. S2CID   228830827.
  13. ↑ Beckwith, Ryan Teague (September 7, 2019). "Trump Changed U.S. Politics. Now He's Changing Political Science". Bloomberg .
  14. ↑ Delli, K.; Livas, C.; Spijkervet, F.K.L.; Vissink, A. (May 16, 2017). "Measuring the social impact of dental research: An insight into the most influential articles on the Web". Oral Diseases. 23 (8). Wiley-Blackwell: 1156. doi:10.1111/odi.12714. PMID   28734099. S2CID   22092987.
  15. ↑ Friedman, Alon (March 15, 2018). "Measuring the promise of Big Data syllabi". Technology, Pedagogy and Education. 27 (2). Routledge: 137. doi:10.1080/1475939X.2017.1408490. ISSN   1475-939X. S2CID   67092462.
  16. ↑ Rikard, Andrew (August 4, 2016). "More Than a Million Syllabuses at Your Fingertips". EdSurge . Retrieved October 2, 2022.
  17. ↑ Daniels, Jessie; Thistlethwaite, Polly (2016). Being a Scholar in the Digital Era: Transforming Scholarly Practice for the Public Good. Policy Press. p. 122. doi:10.1332/policypress/9781447329251.001.0001. ISBN   978-1-4473-2925-1.
  18. ↑ Rutherford, Markella; Levitt, Peggy (November 4, 2020). "Who's on the Syllabus?: World Literature According to the US Pedagogical Canon". Journal of World Literature. 5 (4). Brill Publishers: 621. doi:10.1163/24056480-00504009. ISSN   2405-6472. S2CID   228898017.
  19. ↑ Munguia, Hayley (February 19, 2016). "Everyone Still Reads 'To Kill A Mockingbird'". FiveThirtyEight . Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  20. ↑ Ingraham, Christopher (February 3, 2016). "What Ivy League students are reading that you aren't". The Washington Post . ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved September 29, 2022.
  21. ↑ Barron, Nicholas (July 2021). "Renegades or liberals? Recent reflections on the Boasian legacies in American anthropology". History of the Human Sciences . 34 (3–4). Sage Publications: 368. doi:10.1177/0952695120941195. ISSN   0952-6951. S2CID   225384693.
  22. ↑ Craven, Christa (March 9, 2021). "Teaching Antiracist Citational Politics as a Project of Transformation: Lessons from the Cite Black Women Movement for White Feminist Anthropologists". Feminist Anthropology . 2 (1). Wiley-Blackwell: 4–5. doi:10.1002/fea2.12036. ISSN   2643-7961. S2CID   233623512.
  23. ↑ Schwittay, Anke (2021). Creative Universities: Reimagining Education for Global Challenges and Alternative Futures. Bristol University Press. p. 79. ISBN   978-1-5292-1365-2.
  24. ↑ Scott, Amanda (2019). Pilkington, Olga A.; Pilkington, Ace G. (eds.). Lab Lit: Exploring Literary and Cultural Representations of Science. Lexington Books. p. 13. ISBN   978-1-4985-6599-8.
  25. ↑ Prose, Francine (June 16, 2016). "How Frankenstein's Monster Became Human". The New Republic . ISSN   0028-6583 . Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  26. ↑ Finn, Ed; Guston, David H. (December 29, 2017). "'Frankenstein' Has Become a True Monster". The Wall Street Journal . ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  27. ↑ Manshel, Alexander (March 23, 2021). "Colson Whitehead's History of the United States". MELUS . 45 (4). Oxford University Press: 24. doi: 10.1093/melus/mlaa051 . ISSN   0163-755X.
  28. ↑ Johnson, David (February 25, 2016). "These Are the 100 Most-Read Female Writers in College Classes". Time . Retrieved September 28, 2022.
  29. ↑ Gump, Steven E. (October 2019). "Kate L. Turabian. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers". Journal of Scholarly Publishing . 51 (1). University of Toronto Press: 100. doi:10.3138/jsp.51.1.06. ISSN   1198-9742. S2CID   210531081.
  30. ↑ Johnson, Alex (May 8, 2018). "What are students reading at the best universities?". The Independent . Retrieved October 9, 2022.
  31. ↑ Mumford, Tracy (March 1, 2016). "The 25 most frequently assigned women authors". MPR News . Retrieved October 9, 2022.
  32. ↑ Dam, Andrew Van (September 9, 2022). "States with the worst brain drain – and more!". The Washington Post . Retrieved October 4, 2022.
  33. ↑ Ha, Thu-Huong (January 27, 2016). "These are the books students at the top US colleges are required to read". Quartz . Retrieved October 2, 2022.
  34. 1 2 Baltzly, Dirk; Miles, Graeme; Finamore, John F., eds. (2018). Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Republic. Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN   978-1-108-56293-5.
  35. ↑ Marks, Jonathan (2021). Let's Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education. Princeton University Press. p. 110. ISBN   978-0-691-20771-1.
  36. ↑ Paoletti, Teo; Lee, Hwa Young; Rahman, Zareen; Vishnubhotla, Madhavi; Basu, Debasmita (June 1, 2022). "Comparing graphical representations in mathematics, science, and engineering textbooks and practitioner journals". International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology. 53 (7). Taylor & Francis: 8. Bibcode:2022IJMES..53.1815P. doi:10.1080/0020739X.2020.1847336. ISSN   0020-739X. S2CID   230533709.
  37. ↑ Matthews, Sally (July 2, 2020). "Reviewing the South African Political Studies Curriculum: Evaluating Responses to Calls for Decolonisation". Politikon. 47 (3). Routledge: 335–336. doi:10.1080/02589346.2020.1796000. ISSN   0258-9346. S2CID   221115270.
  38. ↑ Sumner, Jane Lawrence (April 2018). "The Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT): A Web-Based Tool for Estimating Gender Balance in Syllabi and Bibliographies". PS: Political Science & Politics . 51 (2). Cambridge University Press: 396–400. doi:10.1017/S1049096517002074. ISSN   1049-0965. S2CID   159013812.
  39. ↑ Herbel, Jerry (July 3, 2018). "Humanism and bureaucracy: The case for a liberal arts conception of public administration". Journal of Public Affairs Education . 24 (3). Routledge: 402. doi:10.1080/15236803.2018.1429819. ISSN   1523-6803. S2CID   158882673.
  40. ↑ Germano, William; Nicholls, Kit (2022). Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything. Princeton University Press. p. 41. ISBN   978-0-691-19221-5.
  41. ↑ Caferro, William (2019). Teaching History (1st ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 67. ISBN   978-1-119-14712-1.
  42. ↑ Kirtley, Susan E.; Garcia, Antero; Carlson, Peter E., eds. (2020). With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, and Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. pp. 54–55. ISBN   978-1-4968-2603-9 – via Project MUSE.
  43. ↑ Losh, Elizabeth (2017). "Rapid Response: DIY Curricula from FemTechNet to Crowd-Sourced Syllabi". In Ostherr, Kirsten (ed.). Applied Media Studies (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315473857. ISBN   978-1-315-47385-7.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.