Big History B
Teen Focus 12+
Big History, a high school social studies course covering 13.7 billion years of shared history, examines the Universe, from the Big Bang to modernity, and explores common themes and patterns that can help us better understand people, civilizations and the world we live in. This semester (the second half of a two-semester course) encompassing the final 5 units of the Big History course, covers “Humans and Civilization”.
Big History, a high school social studies course covering 13.7 billion years of shared history, examines the Universe from the Big Bang to modernity, and explores common themes and patterns that can help us better understand people, civilizations and the world we live in.
BHB (the second half of a two-semester course) covers the final 5 units of the Big History course, “Humans and Civilization”:
- Unit 6: Early Humans
- Unit 7: Agriculture and Civilization
- Unit 8: Expansion and Interconnection
- Unit 9: Acceleration
- Unit 10: The Future
The Big History course as a whole provides an overview of scientific concepts in an historic context, focusing on four major themes: “Thresholds of Increasing Complexity”, “Differing Scales in Space and Time”, “Claims Testing” and “Collective Learning”.
Weekly webinars are 50 minutes long. Recordings are available for students who must miss a session.
| Topics Covered | How Our Ancestors Evolved |
|---|---|
| Challenge Level | Aimed at students ready for work appropriate to grades 9 through 12. This is a high school social studies course open to students ages 12 and up who are prepared to encounter and discuss challenging science and history topics at a high school level. |
| Time Commitment | Most students report spending approximately 4 hours per week on homework outside of the webinar. |
| Instructor | Headmaster Galahad |
| Required Materials | No book purchases are required. Required materials for coursework (including videos and animations, texts, Project Based Learning (PBL) projects, infographics, comic strips, image galleries, investigations, and activities) are all available online for free. |
| Usually offered | Spring Semester |
| Prerequisites | Big History A. Students must also be prepared to read and analyze challenging material at an upper high school level. Students must also be able to write multi-paragraph texts independently and participate actively in written discussion forums. |
| Available Sessions | Spring 2025 Wed 11am Pacific, Spring 2024 Monday 12pm Pacific, Spring 2023 Friday 11am Pacific |