The Civics Collection on PBS LearningMedia: A Q&A With Seeta Pai of GBH

This August, GBH and PBS rolled out the Civics Collection, a media-rich set of free educational resources to encourage civic understanding and engagement among middle and high school students. With major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the collection, available on PBS LearningMedia, is designed to help educators engage students and promote active learning by connecting principles from the nation’s founding documents to issues relevant to their everyday lives.  

The Civics Collection follows the success of GBH's award-winning U.S. History Collection, which was the most-used collection on PBS LearningMedia in school year 2023-2024. Since its launch in 2022, it has had more than 1.7 million users and 12 million page views among educators and students (as of June 2024). The Civics Collection launched on August 12 and will be complete at the end of 2024.

CPB caught up with Seeta Pai, GBH executive director of education, to discuss the Civics Collection.

Q: What do you want teachers and students to get from this collection?

Seeta Pai

A: We’re deeply indebted to the teachers and students who informed the production of the Civics Collection, and to the millions who visit and use our resources each year on PBS LearningMedia! We hope they find value in the high-quality media, curated and contextualized with research-based instructional support materials. We think they’ll benefit from our approach that centers students in the learning experience, aims to teach the foundations of civics education through both historic and contemporary lenses, and promotes civic understanding and the development of civics skills. Our research indicates that many students may feel disengaged from civics because they don’t see its relevance or see themselves reflected in the curriculum. And national assessments indicate that most students are not proficient in civics. We’re not aiming to replicate a civics textbook, but rather provide teachers with tools to engage students in civics education in a deep, meaningful, active way that builds civic understanding and instills skills that will help them become informed, empathic, media literate, and active participants in our democracy.

Q: What are some of the design features that make the Civics Collection discoverable and accessible to educators and students?

A: The Collection is organized by key topics taught in secondary civics classes across the country, and by the civics skills that teachers are looking to promote. This makes it easy for teachers to navigate and find resources to integrate into their curricula; it also saves them time in identifying resources to adapt for their classrooms. Every resource is consistently designed, with anchor media accompanied by structured support materials for teachers (teaching tips) and students (discussion questions, as well as independent student activities and background readings in many cases) and is aligned to curriculum standards. Every resource also indicates which of our nation’s founding documents it draws upon.

And the collection does what public media does best: lead with high-quality media to engage students. This includes video-based resources from leading public media brands, but also two new, specially designed youth-facing video series, and interactive lessons, timelines, maps, and images.

Finally, we have several features that make our Collection resources accessible. For example, there’s closed captioning, transcripts, and variable video speeds. All interactive lessons are compliant with federal law for students with disabilities who use assistive technologies, and we provide alternative text, or alternative formats as needed, for images for students who are blind or have low vision. All our resources are created with Universal Design for Learning principles.

Q: Civics teaching often incorporates current events. How does the Civics Collection draw on public media programming to address current events in a rapidly changing society?

A: I think it’s safe to say that civics is trending right now! However, we’ve built the collection to be “evergreen,” meaning we focus on fundamental skills and enduring topics designed to teach students how to think, not what to think. In our early research, we confirmed that all civics curricula lean on history to provide the grounding for foundational principles, so we do this but go further with applied examples. For instance, students learn about the “curb-cut effect” from understanding how a bill becomes a law (Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution), and analyze civic engagement using the example of the Americans with Disabilities Act).

To further draw in students and implement education best practices, the collection builds on students’ civics knowledge and applies it to historical and present-day situations to help students understand how government institutions and Constitutional rules work in the “real world.” The collection’s resources emphasize not only government institutions, leaders, and processes, but also how everyday citizens have influences in their communities and the nation. (For example, Christian Dykson roused his classmates and school administration in Fort Collins, Colorado to support janitors). Wherever possible, we include resources on current events. We hope this inspires today’s students to consider how they might become informed and engaged in civics.

Q: The Civics Collection also includes contributions from local public media stations. Why is it important for the Civics Collection to include station-produced resources from communities across the country?

A: We felt it was essential to draw on the wealth of content from across the country, both to represent multiple regions but also because that content met the criteria in our Civics Framework and filled important curriculum needs. Stations across the country can embrace this collection on PBS LearningMedia as their own and share it with teachers and students in their communities. It’s applicable to all states and school districts - civics is taught in some form everywhere. It speaks directly to public media’s core education mission: not just teachers, but members, partners, audiences, and funders can all understand and relate to this topic.

Q: In what ways did the success of the U.S. History Collection that launched in 2022 inform the Civics Collection?

A: We’re so grateful to CPB for their support, to our collaborating contributors, and to the hundreds of teachers and students who helped shape the U.S. History Collection on PBS LearningMedia. Not only is the collection well-used (over 12 million page views), but a rigorous study with 1,200 students across 19 states showed that those who were taught with the collection’s resources -- compared to those who weren’t -- gained significantly in historical knowledge and historical thinking skills, while teachers reported that the resources helped students understand multiple perspectives and think critically about history.

As with the U.S. History Collection, we began the Civics Collection with a preliminary research phase where we reviewed 15 state social studies frameworks for civics; analyzed the landscape of online civics initiatives and organizations; gathered student, teacher, and thought leader advisory groups; and synthesized our key guiding principles in a Civics Framework. We then curated existing resources on PBS LearningMedia to ready them for updating, while beginning formative research and production on brand new video and interactive resources. Both the process and product of the Civics Collection were greatly influenced and benefited by those for the U.S. History Collection.

The Civics Collection is produced by the GBH Education team, with GBH resources, and contributions from Georgia Public Broadcasting, KET, KQED, PBS, PBS News/News Hour, Rhode Island PBS, TPT, WFYI, WVIZ/Ideastream, and Wyoming PBS, as well as from StoryCorps, Retro Report, A Starting Point, iCivics, the Bill of Rights Institute, the Tax Foundation, and NETA. Teacher and student advisors participated in every step of its development, as did experts who formed a Civics Leadership Council, including Eric Liu (Citizen University), Melody Barnes (UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy), Ben Klutsey (Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Allan Carey (Cato Institute), Elizabeth Beaumont (UC Santa Cruz), and Yuval Levin (American Enterprise Institute).

To subscribe to CPB spotlights, press releases and grant announcements, go to cpb.org/subscribe