Open Syllabus Project

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.{{Cite journal |last=Nowogrodzki |first=Anna |date=October 31, 2016 |title=Mining the secrets of college syllabuses |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=539 |issue=7627 |pages=125–126 |doi=10.1038/539125a |pmid=27808216 |bibcode=2016Natur.539..125N |s2cid=4466400 |issn=1476-4687|doi-access=free }} Joe Karaganis, former vice-president of the American Assembly, serves as the project director of the OSP.{{Cite web |last=Herrera |first=Jack |date=2016-04-18 |title=Open Syllabus Project gives empirical insight into curriculum debates |url=https://stanforddaily.com/2016/04/18/open-syllabus-project-gives-empirical-insight-into-curriculum-debates/ |access-date=2022-09-30 |website=The Stanford Daily |language=en-US}} 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).{{Cite journal |last=Noonan |first=Daniel W. |date=2015 |title=Does Size Matter in the Digital Age? Reappraisal Considerations for Syllabi |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24590114 |journal=Archival Issues |volume=37 |issue=1 |page=16 |issn=1067-4993 |jstor=24590114 }} The OSP became a non-profit and independent of the American Assembly in November 2019.{{Cite web |title=The Open Syllabus Project |url=https://americanassembly.org/the-open-syllabus-project |access-date=2022-09-30 |website=The American Assembly |date=30 January 2016 |language=en-US}}

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.{{Cite web |last=Ward |first=Alex |date=February 26, 2016 |title=Open Syllabus Project Releases Syllabus Explorer |url=https://chicagomaroon.com/21671/news/open-syllabus-project-releases-syllabus-explorer/ |access-date=2022-09-30 |website=Chicago Maroon}} 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.{{Cite web |last=Young |first=Jeffrey R. |date=2019-07-19 |title=How a Database of 6 Million Syllabi Could Spawn a New Measure of Scholarly Impact |url=https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-07-19-how-a-database-of-6-million-syllabi-could-spawn-a-new-measure-of-scholarly-impact |access-date=2022-10-01 |website=EdSurge |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Schwab |first=Katharine |date=July 16, 2019 |title=This historic map of 6 million syllabi reveals how college is changing |url=https://www.fastcompany.com/90376685/this-historic-map-of-6-million-syllabi-reveals-how-college-is-changing |url-status= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308141853/https://www.fastcompany.com/90376685/this-historic-map-of-6-million-syllabi-reveals-how-college-is-changing |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |website=Fast Company}} {{As of|2022}}, the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi.{{Cite book |last1=Graham |first1=Shawn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zc9kEAAAQBAJ |title=Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian's Macroscope |last2=Milligan |first2=Ian |last3=Weingart |first3=Scott B. |last4=Martin |first4=Kimberley |date=2022 |publisher=World Scientific |isbn=978-981-12-4305-9 |edition=2nd |page=13 |language=en |doi=10.1142/p981|s2cid=109639779 }} The Syllabus Explorer represents the "largest collection of searchable syllabi ever amassed."

The OSP has collected syllabi data from over 80 countries{{Cite news |last=Beckwith |first=Ryan Teague |date=September 7, 2019 |title=Trump Changed U.S. Politics. Now He's Changing Political Science |work=Bloomberg |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-07/trump-changed-u-s-politics-now-he-s-changing-political-science}} dating to 2000. The syllabi stem from over 4,000 worldwide institutions.{{Cite journal |last1=Delli |first1=K. |last2=Livas |first2=C. |last3=Spijkervet |first3=F.K.L. |last4=Vissink |first4=A. |date=May 16, 2017 |title=Measuring the social impact of dental research: An insight into the most influential articles on the Web |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/odi.12714 |journal=Oral Diseases |language=en |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |volume=23 |issue=8 |page=1156 |doi=10.1111/odi.12714|pmid=28734099 |s2cid=22092987 }} 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.{{Cite journal |last1=Hubbard |first1=David E. |last2=Vaaler |first2=Alyson |date=2021-01-01 |title=An exploratory study of library science journal articles in syllabi |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009913332030152X |journal=The Journal of Academic Librarianship |language=en |publisher=Elsevier |volume=47 |issue=1 |page=102261 |doi=10.1016/j.acalib.2020.102261 |s2cid=228830827 |issn=0099-1333|url-access=subscription }} The OSP also allows syllabi submissions from faculty, students, and administrators.{{Cite journal |last=Friedman |first=Alon |date=2018-03-15 |title=Measuring the promise of Big Data syllabi |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1475939X.2017.1408490 |journal=Technology, Pedagogy and Education |language=en |publisher=Routledge |volume=27 |issue=2 |page=137 |doi=10.1080/1475939X.2017.1408490 |issn=1475-939X |s2cid=67092462|url-access=subscription }} The OSP developers use machine learning and natural language processing to extract metadata from such syllabi.{{Cite web |last=Rikard |first=Andrew |date=2016-08-04 |title=More Than a Million Syllabuses at Your Fingertips |url=https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-08-04-more-than-a-million-syllabuses-at-your-fingertips |access-date=2022-10-02 |website=EdSurge |language=en}} Since only metadata is collected, no individual syllabus or personal identifying information is found in the OSP database.{{Cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Jessie |url=https://academic.oup.com/policy-press-scholarship-online/book/30327 |title=Being a Scholar in the Digital Era: Transforming Scholarly Practice for the Public Good |last2=Thistlethwaite |first2=Polly |year=2016 |publisher=Policy Press |isbn=978-1-4473-2925-1 |page=122 |doi=10.1332/policypress/9781447329251.001.0001}} The OSP classifies the syllabi into 62 subject fields{{snd}}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 among citations in the total citation count and is a numerical indicator of the relative frequency of which a particular work is taught.{{Cite journal |last1=Rutherford |first1=Markella |last2=Levitt |first2=Peggy |author-link2=Peggy Levitt |date=2020-11-04 |title=Who's on the Syllabus?: World Literature According to the US Pedagogical Canon |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/jwl/5/4/article-p606_8.xml |journal=Journal of World Literature |publisher=Brill Publishers |volume=5 |issue=4 |page=621 |doi=10.1163/24056480-00504009 |issn=2405-6472 |s2cid=228898017|url-access=subscription }} The OSP also has data on which texts are most likely to be assigned together.{{Cite web |last=Munguia |first=Hayley |date=2016-02-19 |title=Everyone Still Reads 'To Kill A Mockingbird' |url=https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/to-kill-a-mockingbird-author-harper-lee-dies/ |access-date=2022-10-03 |website=FiveThirtyEight |language=en-US}}

The developers behind the OSP admit that the database is incomplete and likely contains "a fair number of errors."{{Cite news |last=Ingraham |first=Christopher |date=February 3, 2016 |title=What Ivy League students are reading that you aren't |language=en-US |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/03/what-ivy-league-students-are-reading-that-you-arent/ |access-date=2022-09-29 |issn=0190-8286}} 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.

File:Most assigned college book in every state.pngs.]]

Using data from the OSP, anthropologist Laurence Ralph uncovered that black anthropologists are "woefully under-represented in (if not erased from) most anthropology syllabi."{{Cite journal |last=Barron |first=Nicholas |date=July 2021 |title=Renegades or liberals? Recent reflections on the Boasian legacies in American anthropology |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0952695120941195 |journal=History of the Human Sciences |language=en |publisher=Sage Publications |volume=34 |issue=3–4 |page=368 |doi=10.1177/0952695120941195 |s2cid=225384693 |issn=0952-6951|url-access=subscription }} Black authors wrote less than 1 percent of the top 1,000 assigned works.{{Cite journal |last=Craven |first=Christa |date=March 9, 2021 |title=Teaching Antiracist Citational Politics as a Project of Transformation: Lessons from the Cite Black Women Movement for White Feminist Anthropologists |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fea2.12036 |journal=Feminist Anthropology |language=en |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=4–5 |doi=10.1002/fea2.12036 |s2cid=233623512 |issn=2643-7961|url-access=subscription }}

The database indicates Greg Mankiw is the most frequently cited author for college economics courses.{{Cite book |last=Schwittay |first=Anke |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8edEEAAAQBAJ |title=Creative Universities: Reimagining Education for Global Challenges and Alternative Futures |year=2021 |publisher=Bristol University Press |isbn=978-1-5292-1365-2 |page=79 |language=en}}

The OSP found that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the most widely taught novel in college courses.{{Cite book |last=Scott |first=Amanda |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2tCwDwAAQBAJ |title=Lab Lit: Exploring Literary and Cultural Representations of Science |year=2019 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=978-1-4985-6599-8 |editor-last=Pilkington |editor-first=Olga A. |page=13 |language=en |editor-last2=Pilkington |editor-first2=Ace G.}}{{Cite magazine |last=Prose |first=Francine |author-link=Francine Prose |date=2016-06-16 |title=How Frankenstein's Monster Became Human |magazine=The New Republic |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/134271/frankensteins-monster-became-human |access-date=2022-10-03 |issn=0028-6583}}{{Cite news |last1=Finn |first1=Ed |last2=Guston |first2=David H. |date=2017-12-29 |title='Frankenstein' Has Become a True Monster |language=en-US |work=The Wall Street Journal |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/frankenstein-has-become-a-true-monster-1514563511 |access-date=2022-10-10 |issn=0099-9660}} Additionally, the majority of novels published after 1945 taught in English classes were historical fiction.{{Cite journal |last=Manshel |first=Alexander |date=2021-03-23 |title=Colson Whitehead's History of the United States |url=https://academic.oup.com/melus/article/45/4/22/6019947 |journal=MELUS |language=en |publisher=Oxford University Press |volume=45 |issue=4 |page=24 |doi=10.1093/melus/mlaa051 |issn=0163-755X|doi-access=free }}

The most read female writer on college campuses is Kate L. Turabian for her A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations .{{Cite magazine |last=Johnson |first=David |date=February 25, 2016 |title=These Are the 100 Most-Read Female Writers in College Classes |url=https://time.com/4234719/college-textbooks-female-writers/ |magazine=Time |language=en |access-date=2022-09-28}}{{Cite journal |last=Gump |first=Steven E. |date=October 2019 |title=Kate L. Turabian. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers |url=https://utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/jsp.51.1.06 |journal=Journal of Scholarly Publishing |language=en |publisher=University of Toronto Press |volume=51 |issue=1 |page=100 |doi=10.3138/jsp.51.1.06 |s2cid=210531081 |issn=1198-9742|url-access=subscription }} Turabian is followed by Diana Hacker, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, and Virginia Woolf.{{Cite web |last=Johnson |first=Alex |date=2018-05-08 |title=What are students reading at the best universities? |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/university-reading-list-the-book-list-a-book-of-book-lists-marx-shakespeare-ivy-league-oxbridge-a8341891.html |access-date=2022-10-09 |website=The Independent |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Mumford |first=Tracy |date=March 1, 2016 |title=The 25 most frequently assigned women authors |url=https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/03/01/books-most-read-women-authors-in-college-courses |access-date=2022-10-09 |website=MPR News |language=en}}

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.{{Cite news |last=Dam |first=Andrew Van |date=2022-09-09 |title=States with the worst brain drain – and more! |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/09/films-assigned-college/ |access-date=2022-10-04 |newspaper=The Washington Post |language=en}}

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.{{Cite web |last=Ha |first=Thu-Huong |date=2016-01-27 |title=These are the books students at the top US colleges are required to read |url=https://qz.com/602956/these-are-the-books-students-at-the-top-us-colleges-are-required-to-read/ |access-date=2022-10-02 |website=Quartz |language=en}}

The most assigned texts in the field of philosophy include Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Plato's Republic.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a29vDwAAQBAJ |title=Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Republic |date=2018 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-56293-5 |editor-last=Baltzly |editor-first=Dirk |editor-link=Dirk Baltzly |page=1 |language=en |editor-last2=Miles |editor-first2=Graeme |editor-last3=Finamore |editor-first3=John F. |editor-link3=John Finamore}}{{Cite book |last=Marks |first=Jonathan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xgD6DwAAQBAJ |title=Let's Be Reasonable: A Conservative Case for Liberal Education |year=2021 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-20771-1 |page=110 |language=en}} 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).

David Halliday's et al. Fundamentals of Physics is the number one ranked physics textbook in the OSP's database.{{Cite journal |last1=Paoletti |first1=Teo |last2=Lee |first2=Hwa Young |last3=Rahman |first3=Zareen |last4=Vishnubhotla |first4=Madhavi |last5=Basu |first5=Debasmita |date=2022-06-01 |title=Comparing graphical representations in mathematics, science, and engineering textbooks and practitioner journals |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020739X.2020.1847336 |journal=International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology |language=en |publisher=Taylor & Francis |volume=53 |issue=7 |page=8 |doi=10.1080/0020739X.2020.1847336 |bibcode=2022IJMES..53.1815P |s2cid=230533709 |issn=0020-739X|url-access=subscription }}

Data from the OSP indicates that the dominant political science texts are written almost exclusively by white men and scholars based in the West.{{Cite journal |last=Matthews |first=Sally |date=2020-07-02 |title=Reviewing the South African Political Studies Curriculum: Evaluating Responses to Calls for Decolonisation |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2020.1796000 |journal=Politikon |publisher=Routledge |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=335–336 |doi=10.1080/02589346.2020.1796000 |s2cid=221115270 |issn=0258-9346|url-access=subscription }} In the top 200 most-frequently assigned works, 15 are authored by at least one woman.{{Cite journal |last=Sumner |first=Jane Lawrence |date=April 2018 |title=The Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT): A Web-Based Tool for Estimating Gender Balance in Syllabi and Bibliographies |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1049096517002074/type/journal_article |journal=PS: Political Science & Politics |language=en |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=396–400 |doi=10.1017/S1049096517002074 |s2cid=159013812 |issn=1049-0965|url-access=subscription }}

American president Woodrow Wilson's article "The Study of Administration" was the most frequently assigned text in public affairs and administration syllabi.{{Cite journal |last=Herbel |first=Jerry |date=2018-07-03 |title=Humanism and bureaucracy: The case for a liberal arts conception of public administration |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15236803.2018.1429819 |journal=Journal of Public Affairs Education |language=en |publisher=Routledge |volume=24 |issue=3 |page=402 |doi=10.1080/15236803.2018.1429819 |s2cid=158882673 |issn=1523-6803|url-access=subscription }}

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."{{Cite book |last1=Germano |first1=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9WdnEAAAQBAJ |title=Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything |last2=Nicholls |first2=Kit |date=2022 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-19221-5 |page=41 |language=en |author-link=William Germano}}

Historian William Caferro remarks that the OSP is a "tacit experience of sharing, but a useful one."{{Cite book |last=Caferro |first=William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PG_NDwAAQBAJ |title=Teaching History |date=2019 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=978-1-119-14712-1 |edition=1st |location=Hoboken, NJ |page=67 |language=en |author-link=William Caferro}}

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."{{Cite book |editor-last=Kirtley |editor-first=Susan E. |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/73320 |title=With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, and Comics |editor-last2=Garcia |editor-first2=Antero |editor-last3=Carlson |editor-first3=Peter E. |date=2020 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |isbn=978-1-4968-2603-9 |location=Jackson |pages=54–55 |via=Project MUSE}}

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."{{Cite book |last=Losh |first=Elizabeth |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315473840 |title=Applied Media Studies |date=2017 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-315-47385-7 |editor-last=Ostherr |editor-first=Kirsten |edition=1st |location=New York |language=en |chapter=Rapid Response: DIY Curricula from FemTechNet to Crowd-Sourced Syllabi |doi=10.4324/9781315473857 |author-link=Elizabeth Losh}}

• Digital preservation
• List of Web archiving initiatives

{{Notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• {{Cite book |url=https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/3600/Shadow-LibrariesAccess-to-Knowledge-in-Global |title=Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education |date=2018 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=9780262535014 |editor-last=Karaganis |editor-first=Joe |language=en |doi=10.7551/mitpress/11339.001.0001 |oclc=1052851639 |doi-access=free}}

• {{Official website|https://opensyllabus.org/}}
• [https://galaxy.opensyllabus.org/#!point/7687991974118 Open Syllabus Galaxy]

Category:Free and open-source software

Category:Big data

Category:Digital library projects

Category:Educational research

Category:Educational technology non-profits

Category:Machine learning algorithms

Category:Internet properties established in 2016

Category:Headquarters in the United States

Category:501(c)(3) organizations

Category:Web archiving initiatives

Category:Non-profit organizations based in New York City

Category:Natural language processing

Category:Columbia University