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Scalar: Teaching with Scalar

Guide to using Scalar at Penn

Scalar in the Classroom

Using Scalar in the classroom can allow your students to create work for a public audience and can provide avenues for discussions about constructing knowledge.

Scalar books are a convenient package for creating a course assignment.


Getting Started with Scalar in the Classroom

If you are interested in teaching with Scalar, please follow the steps below:

  1. Contact our Scalar Team to set up an initial consultation at least one month prior to the semester when you would like to teach the course.
  2. Your course site will be created within one week of your consultation.
  3. The Scalar Team will offer an "Introduction to your Digital Project" workshop prior to the start of the semester to introduce you to your new site. This is highly recommended if its your first time using Scalar.
  4. Prior to your Scalar Team class visit, you must supply your Scalar Instructor with a full class list to create roles for your students in your Scalar Site.
  5. After your Scalar teaching session, your students may visit Office Hours (every Friday, 2-4pm, Van Pelt 124) throughout the semester.

Instructional Support

Beyond Scalar!

Not sure if Scalar will work for your project? Consider Omeka, a web publishing platform designed for building digital exhibits. Learn more here.

Penn Scalar Project Showcase

Open Archaeology - Scalar Research Journal

Open Archaeology - A Scalar Research Journal

The goal of the Open Archaeology project is to serve as an interface between the public and the professional archaeology community.  We approach this goal by leveraging new digital technologies to make archaeological data and practice accessible to anyone.  We are also continuously experimenting with new innovations in digital technology to improve the quantity and accuracy of the data we collect and share.


We hope that you will join us in this collaboration.  Please consider volunteering to participate in field or digital work.

Against the Current - A Scalar Course Project

Against the Current - A Scalar Course Project

This anthology was created by the members of Tajah Ebram’s Junior Research Seminar, "Radical Black Feminisms: Writing the Carceral State", at the University of Pennsylvania. The experience of this course was largely defined by the autobiographies of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur as well as anthologies like the New York Panther 21’s Look For Me in the Whirlwind (1971) and Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines (2016). As a class, we studied these anthologies in depth to understand the power of the anthologizing form. Most importantly, these writers - majority identifying as radicalized black women, gave us blueprints for converting our lived experience and critical interpretations into an inclusive praxis, one that acknowledges the experiences and oppression of different intersecting identities. The works we studied in class were valuable frameworks as we took to producing our own critical and creative research works as actionable modes of reflection, response and extensions of these readings. Our class anthology collects the voices of our peers in the contemporary movement towards social progress in today's climate of mass incarceration, anti-black violence and violence against women and gender nonconforming people.

A Monument to Climate Change - A Scalar Course Project

A Monument to Climate Change - A Scalar Course Project

This project takes Lenape teachings, embodied by the statue of Teedyuscung, and considers how they are related to scientific understandings of the environment.  Although Indigenous and scientific knowledge systems are quite different, the class discovered interesting intersections where the two systems speak eloquently to one another. The course project was created using Scalar.

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