Today, I’m excited to kick-off a new series of montly blog posts that will introduce you to members of our amazing pool of consulting professors. Our consulting professors are an integral part to the Saylor Foundation because they build each course found on Saylor.org. If you missed Jennifer Shoop’s three-part blog post on how each course is built, please check out This Is How We Do It: Parts I, II, and III.

Now, without further ado, please meet one of our over 170 consulting professors: Ben Schwantes. 

Ben received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Delaware and has taught at several different U.S. academic institutions, including Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania and Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

He has been working with the Saylor Foundation for a number of years: Saylor brought Ben onboard while we were still creating blueprints for our 12 areas of study. With the help of a handful of professors, he built out our history curriculum, making it what it is today with unique courses that you might not always find at your traditional educational institution.

Here’s what Ben has to say about Saylor.org’s History curriculum:

“The history major within the Saylor curriculum is similar in some ways and also differs in some ways from your typical college curriculum. Where it’s similar is that each course replicates, roughly, a 15 week course that you would have at a college or university: the materials are very similar, the readings as well as the analytical materials and that allows the student to acheive the same level of understanding that they would in a typical college classroom. In the course structure, we offer all the basic courses that you would have to take in a history major at a college or university. Where we differ is that we offer a diverse courses that might not typically be taught at a university, certainly not every semester. These unique courses are ‘always on, always available’ for anyone who has access to the website. For instance, we have a course on Warfare in American Society that offers a perspective on major wars that the United States has been involved with, from the Revolution to the present, and the impact of those wars on American society.”

Click on the video below to hear more about Ben’s experience working with Saylor.org, why he thinks that Open Education is important, and why he feels that students can learn in an Open Education environment.

Be sure to stay tuned to the Saylor Journals for future professor profiles!