The University of California, Irvine proudly presents OpenChem, an ambitious open education initiative distinguished by:
- Breadth of coverage – spanning the entire chemistry curriculum, from first-year general chemistry through graduate-level courses.
- Strong faculty and administrative support – demonstrating deep departmental commitment to open education.
- Broad collaborations – including the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, California State University’s Affordable Learning Solutions, MERLOT, and Netease, Inc. (China), to ensure greater access and accessibility.
OpenChem began in 2009 when Professor James Nowick filmed his Organic Chemistry course. Several years later, he collaborated with the OpenCourseWare project to record his graduate class, sparking the idea to involve more faculty. With the backing of the Chemistry Department chair and the Dean of the School of Physical Sciences, the vision expanded: to make as much of UCI’s chemistry curriculum as possible freely available as open educational resources.
Today, OpenChem provides fully captioned video lectures across the undergraduate chemistry curriculum, as well as select graduate courses. These lectures are topically indexed and accessible thanks to partnerships with the California Community Colleges and California State University Chancellor’s Offices. The project also integrates with open textbook efforts, including the ChemWiki project at UC Davis and the upcoming OpenStax General Chemistry textbook. Additionally, Netease, Inc., a sustaining member of the Open Education Consortium, is translating captions into Mandarin, further broadening global access through its video platform.
OpenChem was formally announced in 2013 during Open Education Week. At the launch, Professor Ken Janda, Dean of Physical Sciences, underscored its importance:
“With these lectures, regardless of your circumstances, your age, your gender, where you live, what you do, you can sit in our lecture halls with our students and learn from world-renowned professors. We also invite other universities and individual professors to use any part of our lectures—free of charge and without asking permission.”
Through OpenChem, UC Irvine exemplifies how a university can transform departmental commitment into a global educational resource, making high-quality chemistry instruction accessible to learners everywhere.
