UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE
BERKELEY  DAVIS  IRVINE  LOS ANGELES  MERCED  RIVERSIDE  SAN DIEGO  SAN FRANCISCO
CONTINUING EDUCATION, DISTANCE LEARNING, AND SUMMER SESSION
SANTA BARBARA  SANTA CRUZ
PO Box 6050
Irvine, California 92616-6050
(949) 824-5525 voice
(949) 824-2742 fax
kstam@uci.edu
http://ocw.uci.edu
December 9, 2013
Amy Heitzman
UPCEA
One Dupont Circle, Suite 615
Washington, DC 20036
RE: University of California, Irvine 2014 UPCEA Association Award Submission
Nomination submitted by:
Kathy Tam
Communications Specialist to the Dean of Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session
University of California, Irvine, PO Box 6050, Irvine, CA 92616
kstam@uci.edu or 949-824-5525
Project Background
UC Irvine has launched its largest open education initiative since the inauguration of its
OpenCourseWare project in 2006. The project is called UCI Open Chemistry (UCI Open Chem)
and represents the most comprehensive chemistry curriculum ever offered online, at no cost, to
universities and colleges, individual professors and departments, students, self-learners and
others worldwide. UCI OpenChem provides free and open access to 15 quarter-length
undergraduate and select graduate chemistry video lectures (this is 700 hours of video).
As part of its public and land grant missions, UCI wanted to contribute to the open education
movement in a very significant way. UCI’s School of Physical Sciences, Department of Chemistry
and OpenCourseWare team have been working collaboratively on this project since 2009. The
University believes that by offering a full curriculum online, that it’s furthering the notion of
universal access to high-quality educational materials in an effort to support teachers and students
around the world. UCI’s department of chemistry is one of the nation’s largest producers of
graduates with B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry. So not only did UCI release an entire
undergraduate curriculum, it released intellectual property from the best chemistry researchers
and professors in the country. By releasing the full path of study as OpenCourseWare, UCI
contributes its world-class resources in chemistry to advance the study of on-demand STEM
(science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects.
James Nowick, a well know researcher and professor of chemistry, is the lead faculty member for
this UCI initiative. As an experiment back in 2009, Nowick published his video lectures on
YouTube to simply help UCI students that had missed class or needed more explanation or a
different perspective on a specific topic. To Nowick’s amazement, the lectures have been viewed
not only by his UCI students, but also by thousands of students around the world. His lectures
have impacted students in countries like Ethiopia, India and Pakistan where UC-quality education
is not available, proving the hunger for knowledge around the world. To date, UCI’s faculty
members in the department of chemistry have agreed that this is an imperative to extend UCI’s
instructional excellence to the masses. The department has promised that the goal of this project
is to provide learning for the sake of learning and to make a difference in the lives of students that
would not otherwise have access to such a high quality educational experience. UCI has no plans
to turn the content into Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) or to monetize the effort.
UCI OpenChem Fills the Gaps
OpenChem intends to ease the bottlenecks in chemistry education. Currently, universities and
colleges experience high failure rates in gateway science courses like general chemistry.
Furthermore, the more remedial courses a student takes, the less likely he or she is to graduate.
The flexibility of OpenChem is that it permits adoption at many different levels: 1) remediation for
students prior to entering general chemistry studies, 2) supplemental studies for advanced high
school and undergraduate students, and 3) concurrent support for chemistry majors throughout
their undergraduate years.
Moving From of OpenCourseWare toward Open Degrees
UCI’s open chemistry project provides the entire context of a full undergraduate chemistry major
as defined by its faculty in lecture format. For the first time, a student outside the walls of UCI can
sit in one of our lecture halls. By simply putting the lectures online, an entire undergraduate major
is discoverable and available in one place in a consistent and completely open format. Students
wishing to learn chemistry from open sources no longer have to search among the open channels
and the institutions offering open chemistry courses. Although this it has already been highly
useful to UCI chemistry students who can refer to the lectures as they attend the course in the
classroom, it has also helped students enrolled in chemistry at other universities. And it has
served as a model for institutions in underdeveloped countries, allowing access to what a major
research institution defines as the learning for chemistry majors.
Providing High-Quality Courseware to be Used and Re-Used
Through openly and freely licensing several hundred hours of video lectures, OpenChem permits
flexible incorporation by other institutions, professors or lecturers. Adopters can use and/or take
10 minutes of a lecture, a single lecture, an entire lecture class, or four years of undergraduate
lectures. Because there is no cost associated, others are free to integrate these open educational
resources as may be appropriate to their students.
This initiative supports chemistry education by providing baseline presentations of core and
elective chemistry courses, at no cost. The lectures may serve to reduce student costs as well in
some cases, but we don’t claim that this is a solution for the very serious problem of the
increasing cost of higher education. UCI hopes it can play some role in supporting on-time
graduation by lowering failure rates in general chemistry classes and greater success in upper
division courses as well.
UCI Open Chem is a No-Cost Solution
Because in the openly licensed format (CC-BY-SA 3.0, attribution required, share alike), UCI
contributes to global chemistry education at no marginal cost to itself beyond the already
completed filming. Its own students also benefit by being able to review presentations and
because it is available on YouTube, we don’t have to worry about maintaining it on course pages
behind password protection. By making it open, another institution or professor can use some or
all of the video presentations without even having to contact us for permission.
Helping to Develop More Science Students
UCI believes that the best way to get more undergraduate students to major in STEM subjects is
to expose them, when they are in high school, to the content of a university curriculum. This
supports not only advanced students, who can study material a year or more ahead of what their
high school provides, but also can reach more urban and rural students who dream of becoming
doctors or scientists, but lack experienced chemistry teachers.
UCI’s Project is Supported by its Colleagues: In and Outside of the University
“Making knowledge open to the entire world is a wonderful result of the World Wide Web.” UCI
has taken the next big step in this direction by presenting their entire undergraduate chemistry
curriculum in an open format. This is a wonderful gift from a superb institution in the world’s
greatest university system.” -- Marshall S. Smith, Under Secretary of Education for former Pres.
Bill Clinton and a recent senior counselor to current U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan
"The Open Chem Project at UCI marks a significant step in the progress of the open education
movement, allowing anyone, anywhere the ability to follow a complete field of study using open
courses. It gives educational opportunities to millions of people globally who are otherwise
excluded from higher education. By releasing the full path of study as OpenCourseWare, UCI
contributes its world-class resources in Chemistry to advance the study of STEM subjects so
much in demand." -- Mary Lou Forward, Executive Director of OpenCourseWare Consortium
“UCI's department of chemistry is one of the nation's largest producers of graduates with B.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in chemistry. The UCI Chemistry Department is less than 50 years old and has
already risen to the top 10 percentile of major research universities. OpenChem is a significant
milestone for UC Irvine as we're providing an in-depth study of chemistry to students outside of
our university, giving them the opportunity to study as if they were a UCI student. Our video
lectures are delivered by the most respected professors and researchers in the field of
chemistry." -- Kenneth C. Janda, Ph.D., dean of Physical Sciences, chemistry professor,
University of California, Irvine
“The UCI Department of Chemistry has broken new ground by allowing students to follow a
coherent and integrated pathway toward full mastery of undergraduate chemistry. This is the first
time that students and professors can find a complete undergraduate major in a consistent and
high quality video format on a single website." -- Gary W. Matkin, Ph.D., dean, Continuing
Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session, University of California, Irvine
And Has Impacted Thousands of Students
“My name is Elizabeth Barrios and I'm currently an undergraduate at Wayne State University
(Chemical Engineering) taking an Organic Spectroscopy class to prepare for my upcoming
graduate studies in polymer engineering. I just wanted to drop a note and say thank you very
much for posting your lectures online! I found them about halfway through my course but they
have been so incredibly helpful. My professor for the class basically recites the text to us (we also
use Silverstein) but to hear your explanations on how to interpret the spectra as well as your tips
and tricks from your personal experiences have been tremendously informative. I appreciate
professors like you who put the extra work in and want to provide your students with a solid
understanding of the subject versus just doing it because you have to. So I just wanted to let you
know your work is appreciated by more than just your students out in California.” --Elizabeth
Barrios, Department of Chemical Engineering, Wayne State University
“Hello!
I am a student at San Diego State University, currently taking the first sequence in
organic chemistry.
I LOVE OCW. I am watching the organic chemistry 51A course by James
Nowick. It's so helpful and clear that I am starting to feel dependent on these videos to make my
life easy.”
-- Rizan Maknojia, student, San Diego State University
“Hello Dr. Nowick, my name is Traci Thatcher. I am a senior at the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte. I was recently struggling in my organic class more so than anything I have ever tried;
even calculus and physics. I'm sure you probably receive this, but I would like to thank you so
very much for your online YouTube videos of organic chemistry, particularly Alkyl Halides with
reference to SN1, SN2, E1 and E2 reactions. I understand the material and feel confident to take
my exam tomorrow! Thank you again so much!” -- Traci Thatcher, student, University of North
Carolina at Charlotte
“Dr. Nowick, I wanted to say thank you for putting up your lecture videos on YouTube. I'm a
molecular biology student all the way in the big state of Texas at Wayland Baptist University
in Plainview Texas. In class we were learning the ropes of Mass Spec and it wasn't really covered
in depth. It was your videos that helped me grasp the concepts and I just wanted to say thanks.” -JohnMark Avila, student, Baptist University
“My Respected Sir, I am Kamal Adhikari master student taking organic chemistry as major.
Recently, I have watched all the videos of you regard different spectroscopy lectures. It was
motivating and encouraging all student like me. I have got the vast different in lecture of you and
our Nepalese professors.” -- Kamal Adhikari, student, Nepal
The Results Clearly Document the Demand
On December 4th, UCI OpenCourseWare reached a new milestone – over 1 million minutes of
video was viewed in the past thirty days on our UCIrvine OCW YouTube channel. We anticipate
that by March 2014, UCIrvine OCW YouTube channel will be UCI’s biggest channel by number of
subscribers – as it already is by viewers and minutes viewed. The results for UCI is that,
according to a survey of prospective students, 12% are previewing UCI classes as part of their
learning more about or learning from our university. As of December 6, 2013, just isolating the
traffic to our YouTube Open Chem courses, we’ve received nearly 50,000 views (almost 400,000
minutes) with an average of 8 minutes per view. Our Open Chem videos comprise 31.5% of the
publicly viewable OCW videos. Open Chem views comprise 47.8% of the total number of UCI’s
OCW views. Open Chem minutes comprise 38.0% of the total number of OCW minutes. In
addition, visits to the Open Chem pages on the UCI OpenCourseWare website are approaching
80,000 a month.
Visit our OpenChem Project
Our OpenChem project can be accessed at the following:
UC Irvine OpenCourseWare Website: http://ocw.uci.edu/collections/open_chemistry.html
UCIrvineOCW on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/UCIrvineOCW
About UC Irvine’s Department of Chemistry
Three of its Chemistry graduate programs have been ranked in the Top 20 schools by US News &
World Report, including Organic Chemistry (11th), Physical Chemistry (12th) and Theoretical
Chemistry (18th). The chemistry faculty includes a former Nobel laureate, four members of the
National Academy of Sciences, three fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and
sixteen Sloan Research Fellows.
About Professor James Nowick
James S. Nowick, Ph.D., professor, UC Irvine Department of Chemistry. Professor Nowick
received his A.B. degree from Columbia University in 1985. He was a NSF Graduate Fellow and
an ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Graduate Fellow during his graduate studies at MIT, where
he earned his Ph.D. degree in 1990. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, Nowick began
his independent career as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in
1991. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996 and Professor in 1998. Professor
Nowick's research interests include peptidomimetic chemistry, molecular recognition, and
bioorganic catalysis. He is committed to chemical education and runs the UCI Chemistry Outreach
Program, which reaches over 2,000 high school students each year. Nowick received a Camille
and Henry Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award, an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty
Research Award, an NSF Young Investigator Award, an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
Young Investigator Award, a Presidential Faculty Fellow Award, a Camille Dreyfus TeacherScholar Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and an American Chemical Society
Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award. For his contributions to undergraduate education at UCI, he has
received the UCI Award for Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Undergraduate Research, the
Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research and the UCI School of Physical
Sciences Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education.
For questions or additional information, please contact Kathy Tam at kstam@uci.edu.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
Kathy Tam
Communications Specialist to the Dean of Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session
University of California, Irvine
kstam@uci.edu, 949-824-885