The Big History Project

COURSE THEMES

Big History requires students to examine big questions:

Essential Skills

Core Concepts

COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES

COURSE STRUCTURE

Part 1: Formations and Early Life

Part 2: Humans

Where did we come from? What causes change? Where are we heading?

Thinking across scales

Integrating multiple disciplines

Making and testing claims

Thresholds

Collective learning

Origin stories

Explain how thresholds of increasing complexity, differing scales of time and space, claim testing, and collective learning help us understand historical, current, and future events as part of a larger narrative.

Integrate perspectives from multiple disciplines to create, defend, and evaluate the history of the Universe and Universal change.

Deepen an understanding of key historical and scientific concepts and facts; use these in constructing explanations.

Engage in meaningful scientific inquiry and historical investigations by being able to hypothesize, form researchable questions, conduct research, revise one’s thinking, and present findings that are well- supported by scientific and historical evidence.

Critically evaluate, analyze, and synthesize primary and secondary historical, scientific, and technical texts to form well crafted and carefully supported written and oral arguments.

Communicate arguments to a variety of audiences to support claims through analysis of substantive texts and topics; use valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence through individual or shared writing, speaking, and other formats.

Locate and understand how our own place, our community’s place, and humanity as a whole fit into and impact Big History’s narrative.

Engage in historical analysis using the theories and practices from multiple disciplines, toward an integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of the history of the Universe.

Unit 1: What Is Big History?

Driving Question: Why do we look at things from far away and close up?

Unit 2: The Big Bang

Driving Question: How and why do individuals change their minds?

Unit 3: Stars and Elements

Driving Question: How can looking at the same information from different perspectives pave the way for progress?

Unit 4: Our Solar System and Earth

Driving Question: How and why do theories become generally accepted?

Unit 5: Life

Driving Question: How and why do theories evolve?

Unit 6: Early Humans

Driving Question: What makes humans different from other species?

Unit 7: Agriculture and Civilization

Unit 7 Driving Questions:

Unit 7 Learning Outcomes:

Unit 8: Expansion and Interconnection

Driving Question: What are the positive and negative impacts of interconnection?

Unit 9: Acceleration

Driving Question: To what extent has the Modern Revolution been a positive or a negative force?

Unit 10: The Future

Driving Question: What’s the next threshold?

The Big History course focuses on three essential skills and three key concepts that we want students to master. The essential skills are: thinking across scales, integrating multiple disciplines, and making and testing claims. The core concepts are: thresholds, collective learning, and origin stories.

• How has the Universe and life within it grown more complex over the past 13.8 billion years?

• How do we know what we know about the past?

• How can we judge claims about the past?

• Why does what we “know” change over time?

• How does what happened during the early days of the Universe, the Solar System, and the Earth shape what we are experiencing today?

Big History encourages students to think across scales, from the massive expanse of the Universe to the smallest of atoms.

Thinking across scales helps students understand how taking different perspectives can change our understanding of history. This is realized not only through zooming in and out, but also via an understanding of periodization and causation.

Students need to think across scale in terms of both time and distance. This helps us to frame our experience at the level of the personal, family, community, national human and geological.

Big History encourages the use of interdisciplinary thinking and methodologies. Students should integrate the insights of multiple disciplines when analyzing and drawing conclusions about historical information, including social, physical, and natural sciences.

Students should become aware of a range of scholarly disciplines and understand the types of questions they ask, the types of conclusions that they draw, and the types of evidence they use to support their findings.

Big History encourages students to develop a thoughtful, consistent, and rigorous approach to testing new ideas and information.

Students should apply these techniques in their writing and other academic discourse.

Big History looks at the Universe as a series of moments called thresholds. These moments are characterized by a set of ingredients and just-right ‘Goldilocks Conditions’ that result in new forms of complexity. Big History tells the story of the Universe by using these moments to describe Universal change.

The use of thresholds is unique to Big History, but it provides a helpful means of analysis that can be applied to more traditional historical contexts and other disciplines.

Collective learning is the human ability to share, preserve, and build knowledge over time. In Big History, this is the defining characteristic that separates humans from other species.

There are numerous explanations of the origins of our planet as well as the Universe as a whole. Since the time of the earliest humans, we have struggled to make sense of our world. Big History represents one point of view, and is considered a modern, scientific origin story.

The Big History origin story is incomplete and will continue to evolve as science and scholarly inquiry continue to advance.

Define thresholds of increasing complexity, origin stories, and scale. (CO1)

Understand that Big History is a modern, science-based origin story that draws on many different types of knowledge. (CO2, CO8)

Understand how you fit into the Big History narrative, using the concept of “thresholds” to frame your past, present, and future, as well as the history of the Universe. (CO1, CO7)

Understand what disciplines are and consider how the viewpoints of many different scholars can be integrated for a better understanding of a topic. (CO2, CO8)

Learn to use timelines as a way to compare the scale of personal and historic events. (CO7)

Identify a thesis statement and how writing is structured, and evaluate both of those elements in writing. (CO6)

Explain the basics of the Big Bang theory and the primary evidence that supports this theory. (CO1, CO3, CO6)

Using evidence from texts, explain why views of the Universe have changed over time and the roles that scientists played in shaping our understanding of the origin of the Universe. (CO3, CO5)

Understand how to use claim testing to evaluate a claim or resource. (CO1, CO3, CO5, CO6)

Locate Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Hubble on a timeline and explain what each added to our collective understanding of the structure of the Universe. (CO1, CO7)

Describe how stars form. (CO3, CO5)

Explain what happens in the life of a star and explain what happens when a star dies. (CO1, CO3, CO5)

Explain how the death of stars results in the creation of heavier elements. (CO1, CO3)

Explain why the formation of stars and the emergence of elements are so important in our world. (CO3, CO4, CO7)

Understand what scholars from multiple disciplines know about a topic and the questions they can ask to understand the topic from an integrated perspective. (CO2, CO5, CO8)

Understand how to use and apply the concept of periodization. (CO2, CO3, CO4)

Identify various types of causes and consequences, including short-term, long-term, and triggering events. (CO1)

Explain why planets are more complex than stars. (CO1, CO3)

Use evidence to explain how the Earth and its atmosphere developed and changed over time. (CO4, CO5, CO6, CO8)

Explain the basic mechanisms and key pieces of evidence for plate tectonics, and how plate tectonics impacts life on Earth. (CO3, CO4, CO5, CO6), (CO2)

Define geology, the types of questions geologists ask, and the tools they use to answer those questions. (CO3 CO5, CO8)

Explain why geology is important to understanding the history of the Earth. (CO2, CO8)

Understand how geologists can work with historians and scientists from other disciplines to form a deeper understanding of the history of the Earth. (CO2, CO8)

Understand multiple causes and how identify them. (C03)

Demonstrate an ability to construct an argument in writing. (CO6)

Describe the conditions that made it possible for life to emerge on Earth. (CO1, CO3)

Explain the differences between life and nonlife. (CO3)

Describe the major events in the development of life on Earth and explain what is meant by the term biosphere. (CO3, CO5)

Use evidence to explain adaptation and evolution, including Darwin’s theory of natural selection and DNA. (CO4, CO5, CO6)

Demonstrate using texts as evidence in historical writing. (CO3, CO6)

Describe human evolution, using evidence and connection to other species of mammals. (CO3, CO4, CO5)

Explain whether or not symbolic language makes humans different. (CO4, CO5, CO6, CO8)

Describe how early humans lived. (CO3, CO5)

Explain collective learning. (CO1, CO3)

Understand what scholars from multiple disciplines know about a topic and the questions they can ask to gain an understanding of the topic from an integrated perspective. (CO2, CO5, CO8)

Show early human migration on a map. (CO3, CO7)

Demonstrate using BHP concepts accurately in writing. (CO1, C06)

Demonstrate an understanding of multiple causes and how they complicate the relationship between causes, consequences, and their interaction with one another. (CO3)

To what extent was farming an improvement over foraging?

What makes human societies similar and different? (WH)

Why do societies collapse? (WH)

Define agriculture and describe where it emerged. (CO3, CO5)

Identify the features of agrarian civilizations. (CO3, CO5)

Understand the similarities and differences between the lifestyles of hunter-gatherers and farmers. (CO3, CO5, CO6)

Describe how early civilizations formed and their key features. (CO2, CO3, CO6)

Understand what scholars from multiple disciplines know about agriculture and civilization and the information they can derive from them using an integrated perspective. (CO2, CO5, CO8)

Describe how agrarian civilizations formed and analyze their key similarities and differences. (CO3, CO4, CO5, CO7)

Use sentence starters to strengthen ability to make an argument in writing. (CO6)

Analyze what propelled the expansion and interconnection of agrarian civilizations. (CO2, CO3, CO5)

Investigate the implications of interconnected societies and regions by looking at how commerce has spread. (CO2, CO3, CO5, CO8)

Explain how new networks of exchange accelerated collective learning and innovation. (CO1, CO3, CO5, CO6, CO8)

Describe the changing characteristics of societies in the four world zones before and after oceanic travel and the thickening of global networks. (CO2, CO3, CO5, CO7)

Use sentence starters to strengthen ability to use texts as evidence in writing. (CO5, CO6)

Analyze a complex historical event through the lens of causality. (C03, C05)

Describe accelerating global change and the factors that describe it. (CO3, CO5, CO6, CO8)

Understand the key features that define the Anthropocene. (CO2, CO3, CO5, CO6, CO7, CO8)

Describe the acceleration in world population, technology, science, communication, and transportation. Explain how they have benefited and threatened humanity. (CO2, CO3, CO5, CO6, CO8)

Explain the changes in the use, distribution, and importance of natural resources on human life. (CO2, CO5, CO7, CO8)

Use sentence starters to build skills in applying BHP concepts to writing. (CO1, C06)

Analyze the causes and consequences of shifts in world population, including the impact of industrialism and commerce. (WH) (CO3, CO5, CO6, CO8)

Analyze the causes, characteristics, and long-term consequences of World War I, the Great Depression and World War II. (WH) (CO3, CO5, CO6, CO8)

Explain the Big History story and its defining features and patterns. (CO1, CO2, CO3, CO4, CO7, CO8)

Identify important human and environmental issues that affect the future of our species and the biosphere. (CO2, CO3, CO4, CO6, CO7, CO8)

Propose a vision of the future based on new understandings of the past. (CO4, CO6, CO7, CO8)