The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an online open-source platform that catalogs and analyzes millions of college syllabi. Founded by researchers from the American Assembly at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, 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.

History

The OSP was formed by a group of data scientists,

sociologists This list of sociologists includes people who have made notable contributions to sociological theory or to research in one or more areas of sociology. A * Peter Abell, British sociologist * Andrew Abbott, American sociologist * Margaret ...

, and digital-humanities researchers at the American Assembly, a public-policy institute based at

. The OSP was partly funded by the

Sloan Foundation The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is an American philanthropic nonprofit organization. It was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan Jr., president and chief executive officer of General Motors. The Sloan Foundation makes grants to support origin ...

and the Arcadia Fund. Joe Karaganis, former vice-president of the American Assembly, serves as the project director of the OSP. The project builds on prior attempts to archive syllabi, such as

H-Net __NOTOC__ H-Net ("Humanities & Social Sciences Online") is an interdisciplinary forum for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It is best known for hosting electronic mailing lists organized by academic disciplines; according to the or ...

MIT OpenCourseWare MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to publish all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, freely and openly available to anyone, anywh ...

, and historian Dan Cohen's defunct ''Syllabus Finder'' website (Cohen now sits on the OSP's advisory board). The OSP became a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

and independent of the American Assembly in November 2019. In January 2016, the OSP launched a

beta version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

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. 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. , the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi. The Syllabus Explorer represents the "largest collection of searchable syllabi ever amassed."

Methodology

The OSP has collected syllabi data from over 80 countries dating to 2000. The syllabi stem from over 4,000 worldwide institutions. Most of the OSP's data originates from the United States. Canada, Australia, and the U.K also have large datasets. The OSP primarily collects syllabi by scraping publicly accessible university websites. The OSP also allows syllabi submissions from faculty, students, and administrators. The OSP developers use

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

to extract

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

from such syllabi. Since only metadata is collected, no individual syllabus or

personal identifying information Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely used in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates has fou ...

is found in the OSP database. The OSP classifies the syllabi into 62 subject fieldscorresponding to the

U.S. Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a United States Cabinet, cabinet-level department of the federal government of the United States, United States government, originating in 1980. The department began operating on May 4, 1980, havin ...

's Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP). Additionally, the OSP assigns each text a "teaching score" from 0–100. This score represents the text's

percentile rank In statistics, the percentile rank (PR) of a given score is the percentage of scores in its frequency distribution that are less than that score. Formulation Its mathematical formula is : PR = \frac \times 100, where ''CF''—the cumulative fr ...

among citations in the total citation count and is a numerical indicator of the relative frequency of which a particular work is taught. The OSP also has data on which texts are most likely to be assigned together. The developers behind the OSP admit that the database is incomplete and likely contains "a fair number of errors." 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 A blackboard or a chalkboard is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulphate or calcium carbonate, better known as chalk. Blackboards were originally made of smooth, thin sheets of black or da ...

Notable findings

Most assigned college book in every state

Anthropology

Using data from the OSP,

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

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

Economics

The database indicates

Greg Mankiw Nicholas Gregory Mankiw ( ; born February 3, 1958) is an American macroeconomist who is currently the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Mankiw is best known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics. Man ...

is the most frequently cited author for college economics courses.

English literature

The OSP found that

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( , ; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of science fiction# ...

's ''

Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, crea ...

'' was the most widely taught novel in college courses. Additionally, the majority of novels published after 1945 taught in English classes were

historical fiction Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the Setting (narrative), setting of particular real past events, historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literatur ...

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'' ''.'' Turabian is followed by Diana Hacker,

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically accl ...

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

, and

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

Film

The most assigned film according to the OSP is the 1929 Soviet documentary film, '' Man with a Movie Camera.'' English filmmaker

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...

is the most assigned director in college courses.

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''.

Philosophy

The most assigned texts in the field of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

include

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

's ''

Nicomachean Ethics The ''Nicomachean Ethics'' (; , ) is Aristotle's best-known work on ethics: the science of the good for human life, that which is the goal or end at which all our actions aim. () It consists of ten sections, referred to as books, and is closely ...

,''

John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...

's ''

Utilitarianism In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...

'', and

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

's ''

Republic A republic, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...

''. Plato's ''Republic'' was also the second most assigned text in universities in the

English-speaking world The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English language, English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, making it the ...

(only behind Strunk and

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

's ''

Elements of Style ''The Elements of Style'' (also called ''Strunk & White)'' is a style guide for formal grammar used in American English writing. The first publishing was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight ...

'').

Physics

David Halliday's et al. ''

Fundamentals of Physics ''Fundamentals of Physics'' is a calculus-based physics textbook by David Halliday, Robert Resnick, and Jearl Walker. The textbook is currently in its 12th edition (published October, 2021). The current version is a revised version of the or ...

'' is the number one ranked physics textbook in the OSP's database.

Political science

Data from the OSP indicates that the dominant

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

texts are written almost exclusively by white men and scholars based in

the West West is a cardinal direction or compass point. West or The West may also refer to: Geography and locations Global context * The Western world * Western culture and Western civilization in general * The Western Bloc, countries allied with NAT ...

. In the top 200 most-frequently assigned works, 15 are authored by at least one woman.

Public administration

American president

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...

's article "

The Study of Administration "The Study of Administration" is an 1887 article by Woodrow Wilson in ''Political Science Quarterly''. It is widely considered a foundational article in the field of public administration, making Wilson one of the field's founding fathers, along wi ...

" was the most frequently assigned text in public affairs and administration syllabi.

Reception

According to

William Germano William Germano is an American editor and college professor. He was editor-in-chief of Columbia University Press, then as vice-president and publishing director at Routledge, before becoming professor and dean of the faculty of humanities at Coop ...

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''." Historian William Caferro remarks that the OSP is a "tacit experience of sharing, but a useful one." 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." Media theorist Elizabeth Losh opines that "

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

approaches", like the OSP, may "raise troubling questions for instructors about

informed consent Informed consent is an applied ethics principle that a person must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about accepting risk. Pertinent information may include risks and benefits of treatments, alternative treatme ...

pedagogical Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...

privacy, and quantified metrics."

Notes

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://opensyllabus.org/
Open Syllabus Galaxy
Free and open-source software Big data Digital library projects Educational research Educational technology non-profits Machine learning algorithms Internet properties established in 2016 Headquarters in the United States 501(c)(3) organizations Web archiving initiatives Non-profit organizations based in New York City Natural language processing Columbia University

History

Methodology

Notable findings

Anthropology

Economics

English literature

Female writers

Film

History

Philosophy

Physics

Political science

Public administration

Reception

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links