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 American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

, 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, and digital-humanities researchers at the

, a public-policy institute based at

. The OSP was partly funded by the Sloan Foundation 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 o ...

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) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

and independent of the American Assembly in November 2019. 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. 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 Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...

. , 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 inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to proc ...

to extract metadata from such syllabi. Since only metadata is collected, no individual syllabus or personal identifying information is found in the OSP database. The OSP classifies the syllabi into 62 subject fields—corresponding to the U.S. Department of Education'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. Its mathematical formula is : PR = \frac \times 100, where ''CF''—the cumulative frequency—is ...

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.

Notable findings

Most assigned college book in every state

Anthropology

Using data from the OSP, anthropologist

Laurence Ralph Laurence Ralph is an American writer, filmmaker and researcher. He is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and the Director of Center on Transnational Policing. Ralph's research interests include urban ethnography, disability studie ...

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 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; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...

's ''

Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific exp ...

'' 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 the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ...

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. Her first novel, '' The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed '' S ...

, Jane Austen, and

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born ...

Film

The most assigned film according to the OSP is the 1929 Soviet documentary film, ''

Man with a Movie Camera ''Man with a Movie Camera'' (russian: Человек с киноаппаратом, translit=Chelovek s kinoapparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, an ...

.'' English filmmaker

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. 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 featur ...

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 include

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...

's '' Nicomachean Ethics,'' John Stuart Mill's ''

Utilitarianism In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charac ...

'', and

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institutio ...

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

English-speaking world Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest languag ...

(only behind Strunk and

White White is the lightness, lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully diffuse reflection, reflect and scattering, scatter all the ...

's '' Elements of Style'').

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 orig ...

'' 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, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and ...

texts are written almost exclusively by white men and scholars based in the West. 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 an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of P ...

'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 w ...

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

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''." Historian

William Caferro William Caferro is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History & Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. His expertise is in medieval and Renaissance European history. His publications synthesize economic, ...

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 Elizabeth Losh is a media theorist and digital rhetoric scholar, who is a professor of English and American Studies at the College of William and Mary. Education Elizabeth Losh earned a Bachelor of Arts (''magna cum laude'') from Harvard Universi ...

opines that " big data approaches", like the OSP, may "raise troubling questions for instructors about

informed consent Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law, that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care. Pertinent information may include risks and benefits of treatm ...

, pedagogical 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 English-language websites 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