TheOpen Syllabus Project (OSP) is an onlineopen-source platform that catalogs and analyzes millions of collegesyllabi.[3] Founded by researchers from theAmerican Assembly atColumbia University, the OSP has amassed the most extensive collection of searchable syllabi. Since itsbeta launch in 2016, the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi from over 80 countries, primarily byscraping publicly accessible university websites. The project is directed by Joe Karaganis.
In January 2016, the OSP launched abeta 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 aknowledge map.[9][10] As of 2022[update], the OSP has collected over 7 million course syllabi.[11] The Syllabus Explorer represents the "largest collection of searchable syllabi ever amassed."[12]
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 largedatasets.[10]
The OSP primarily collects syllabi byscraping publicly accessible university websites.[12] The OSP also allows syllabi submissions from faculty, students, and administrators.[15] The OSP developers usemachine learning andnatural language processing to extractmetadata from such syllabi.[16] Since only metadata is collected, no individual syllabus orpersonal identifying information is found in the OSP database.[17] The OSP classifies the syllabi into 62 subject fields – corresponding to theU.S. Department of Education'sClassification of Instructional Programs (CIP).[12] Additionally, the OSP assigns each text a "teaching score" from 0–100. This score represents the text'spercentile rank among citations in the total citation count and is a numerical indicator of therelative 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 privatecourse-management software likeBlackboard.[4]
Using data from the OSP,anthropologistLaurence 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]
The most assigned film according to the OSP is the 1929 Soviet documentary film,Man with a Movie Camera. English filmmakerAlfred Hitchcock is the most assigned director in college courses.[32]
Data from the OSP indicates that the dominantpolitical science texts are written almost exclusively by white men and scholars based inthe West.[37] In the top 200 most-frequently assigned works, 15 are authored by at least one woman.[38]
According toWilliam 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: communicatingwith students."[40]
HistorianWilliam 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]
$1,942,525 (2020)[1]