UC Irvine Joins OpenCourseWare Consortium

First University of Calif. Campus to Offer Free and Open Global Access to the University’s Learning Assets and Educational Materials

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The University of California, Irvine (UCI) has announced its membership in the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW). In joining the consortium, UCI has committed to strengthening the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, placing UCI on a growing list of prestigious U.S. and international universities already members of the OCW Consortium, including the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Kyoto University of Japan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Institute of Technology at Tiruchirappali in India, Paris Tech Graduate School, The Open University of United Kingdom, Tufts University, University of Notre Dame, and Yale. UCI is the first University of California campus—as well as the only West Coast University—to join the consortium so far, a noteworthy milestone that signifies an important institutional social and organizational priority.

UC Irvine’s membership in the consortium is consistent with its public and land-grant missions and its desire to play a significant role in contributing to the social welfare of the state, the nation and the world. OER showcases the University’s top instructional efforts and makes course materials free for everyone in the world. Availability of the learning assets and course materials is significant for educators, students, and self-learners.

UCI OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based resource that houses educational assets that are discoverable, searchable, modifiable, and, best of all, free and easily available. Provided by the UCI Distance Learning Center and available beginning January 2007, the UCI OCW site’s first course offerings will include:

• A demonstration course, the first in a series of 13 courses, designed to prepare educators to sit for the CSET exams in mathematics and science;
• A course in personal financial planning entitled, “The Fundamentals of Financial Planning;” designed to provide the general public with the basic concepts of financial planning;
• Core course lessons from several flagship UC Irvine Extension professional certificate programs to supplement skills of working adults seeking career enhancement or personal enrichment.

OpenCourseWare is part of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, a funding priority of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which aims to provide high quality teaching and learning resources for the express purpose of increasing educational achievement and sustaining social and economic development.

At UCI, the OER movement is headed by Dr. Gary W. Matkin, dean of Continuing Education at the forward-thinking institution. Initial talks on the subject of content sharing and e-learning began in 2002, at a symposium on the UCI campus sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Education Program and the UCI Distance Learning Center. Nearly two dozen educators and information technology specialists assembled to hash out the logistics of open access online learning, emphasizing the need to clearly define the program’s potential value and need. Careful consideration and planning paved the way for UCI’s revolutionary OpenCourseWare announcement.

Through UCI’s OpenCourseWare site educators are encouraged to make use of the materials in developing curriculum, and self-learners—as well as students—are urged to employ the materials for self-study or supplementary use. All course materials contained on the UCI OCW site may be utilized in accordance with Creative Commons licenses, allowing for the material to be used, copied, distributed, translated, and modified.

About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 27,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.3 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine Distance Learning Center: The UC Irvine Distance Learning Center is dedicated to providing transforming learning experiences for local and global constituencies and offers exciting and innovative courses and certificate programs for a culturally diverse student body. Distance Learning Center provides the UC Irvine campus and strategically selected other organizations with distance learning services, including the development and delivery of courses using online technology.

About the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW): The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through OpenCourseWare. For more information, please visit www.ocwconsortium.org.

Editor’s Note - For more information about the University of California, Irvine OCW initiative, please visit www.ocw.uci.edu or contact Kathy Tam at 949-824-2308.