UCI OpenCourseWare is preparing for bigger things. For this reason, in mid-June we will be switching our hosting. Your browser, depending on your location, may not recognize the new host for a few days. Please make sure you clear your cache and try again in a day. For most of you, the change may be […]
Europe prepares for higher education’s new era
I’m on my way to the HOME conference in Porto, Portugal tomorrow, so I sat down to read the recently released report to the European Commission on “new modes of learning and teaching in higher education.” Two things struck me about the report. First, it addresses all of the issues that are on the table: […]
Big green download button
The download button on course pages provides the opportunity to download the associated files and pages of a course with one big exception: videos are referenced only by URL. The download file has a .imscc suffix, which stands for IMS Common Cartridge format. However, it can be opened with any .zip program, such as 7-Zip […]
Chemistry Department’s Frozen Parody Goes Viral
When academics refer to rock stars, it is usually a reference to professors whose works are frequently cited. The UCI Chemistry Department, already experienced from their OpenChem video lectures, took this approach one step further, producing a music video (!) based on the Disney animated movie, Frozen. [Disclaimer: Since the movie itself came out, my […]
The Global Reach of the UCI OpenCourseWare Website
Besides our YouTube channel, the OpenCourseWare website (http://ocw.uci.edu) continues its steady growth, reaching 30,000 unique users monthly for 46,000 total sessions. However, its global reach is practically universal. Using Google Analytics, in the past year, the website has reached 222 countries and independent or autonomous territories. The top ten countries are: United States (55.2%) India […]
Associate Dean Cooperman Re-Appointed to African Virtual University Board of Directors
Larry Cooperman, Associate Dean for Open Education, was appointed to a third two-year term at the meeting of the General Assembly of the African Virtual University on September 5th. The African Virtual University provides pan-African distance learning curricula and other services. It currently has some 35 partner universities in 27 countries and is developing a joint computer […]
Open Educational Resources for CSET-takers
We discovered that when we switched domains (twice!) in a very short time, we not only left the search engines and some of our users behind, but we also inadvertently broke some of the code and even images on which the site depends. Happily, we have just fixed it all. Please check the CSET collections […]
UCIrvineOCW YouTube channel passes 10000 subscribers
Okay, so we passed 9000 10000(!) subscribers. Along with a million minutes viewed per month, that is a large number of subscribers. Often a student will drop the subscription to a course playlist when they finish their own class. However, the ratio of subscribers gained to lost in a typical month is 10:1. So the […]
OpenCourseWare Consortium becomes Open Education Consortium
At its 2014 global conference in Ljubjlana, Slovenia, the OpenCourseWare Consortium announced the results of a ballot proposition to change its name. By a wide majority, the membership of the university-based organization changed its name to the Open Education Consortium. The reasons for the name change go beyond mere rebranding. As the open education environment […]
OpenChem transcriptions available soon.
The project to caption and transcribe OpenChem, supported by the California State University and the California Community Colleges, is underway. To see an example of its benefits, check out this YouTube video of a class lecture in the Chem 131C playlist. Chem 131C, Thermodynamics and Chemical Dynamics, was taught last year by Professor Reginald Penner, current […]