Why everyone should study big history?

All too often, students learn facts and skills but don't have the chance to connect them all. Big history links different areas of knowledge into one unified story. It’s a framework for learning about anything and everything. This unified story provides students with a deeper awareness of our past, hopefully better preparing them to help shape the future of our fragile planet.

By giving students tools to incite exploration and connect knowledge, our aim is to help young people develop key critical thinking skills that can prove vital in any discipline they decide to follow in their academic/professional lives.

 

Big history covers 13.7B years of shared history, from before the Big Bang to modernity. Big History explores common themes and patterns spanning vast time scales, helping us better understand people, civilizations and the world we live in.

The Big History Project LLC (BHP) a collaborative focused on bringing this unique learning experience to life for high school students. The course is designed as a history course targeting 9th or 10th graders.

As a history course, it revisits the journey to humankind, as we know it today calling on different fields of study at each respective juncture. As the story crosses science, history, social studies, and more, common themes and patterns surface-suddenly linking the Universe in a memorable, almost poetic, way.

To date, five US schools have participated in an augural pilot and forty more are poised to jump in for the Fall of 2012.

Online approach

We envision all of the content freely available online in perpetuity after the content and curriculum are finalized. A completely web-based, blended learning model ensures the content is up-to-date, relieves schools of the need for costly textbooks, and also helps teachers engage students with flexible, approachable, media-rich materials.

Team

We have assembled a great team of professionals working to continuously refine the course curriculum and make big history a defining learning experience.  

Pilot Schools 

No one knows what works better than teachers do. Accordingly, the entire course has been developed with our pilot schoolteachers and administrators. All aspects of the course from the core curriculum and content to the assessment strategy have been devised with our pilot school partners. Our 2011-2012 pilot schools include:

  • Lakeside: independent, Seattle WA
  • San Diego HS, School for International Studies: public, San Diego, CA
  • Greenhills School: independent, Ann Arbor MI
  • Northville HS: public, Northville MI
  • Rivers School: independent; Weston MA
  • Brooklyn Latin: public, New York
  • MYNOSSAL: public, Victoria, Australia
  • Narara Valley: public, New South Wales, Australia

Key Partners

BHP works with a wide range of experts and partners, and guest lecturers to bring the ideas of big history to life and provide students unique glimpses into different fields.

David Christian: Professor of History at Macquarie University, Sydney. David is the father of big history having built out a widely taught college-level course. David oversees the strategy for the course and is the star of many guest lectures.

Bob Bain: Associate Professor of History and Education at the University of Michigan. Bob oversees all course design and delivery with a specific emphasis on the assessment plan and standards alignment.

Noteworthy guest speakers

  • Walter Alvarez
  • Cynthia Stokes Brown
  • Sal Khan
  • Janna Levin
  • Craig Benjamin
  • Skip Gates

Program Sponsorship

Bill Gates is providing program support to establish the Big History Project and prepare it for free, public access.

© 2011 Big History, LLC.