Big History for everyone

I’ve posted several times about the Big History Project, which David Christian and I launched a few years ago. This year we launched the school version, which was limited to teachers and students. Somewhat unexpectedly, we’ve also been getting a lot of requests from people who aren’t in school anymore but are still eager to try the course.

So today we’re launching a new version of Big History: one that’s open and free for everyone.

Like the school course, this version covers the history of the universe and how everything ties together—the basic approach that makes Big History my favorite course of all time. But in this version, there are no writing assignments or lesson plans. You watch lectures and experiment with interactive features. You’ll see some clips from the History Channel’s new show Big History, which we helped produce. There are a few optional quizzes along the way, and if you pass them, we will send you a “Certified Big Historian” sticker.

It’s hard to boil down 13.7 billion years of history into something manageable. But I think the writers, developers and producers who worked on this made an entertaining and informative course. You should be able to finish it in four or five hours. I encourage everyone to take a look.