Volume 30 · Number 2 · Winter 2013
UC Online: Admission optional
“Classroom Not Required.” So says UC Online on its website, promoting classes developed by some of the university’s most outstanding faculty. “We believe that a UC education isn’t about how you learn but what you learn — and how you apply it to make California and the world a better place.”
Last spring, UC Davis Professor Arnold Bloom presented “Global Climate Change,” one of 14 courses offered by UC Online since it began in January 2012. The courses, which earn UC credits, were originally for UC students only — and more than 1,700 UC students enrolled during the first year, at no cost, because they already paid regular tuition.
For the next term, starting in January 2013, UC Online is making a push for qualified non-UC students to enroll alongside UC students in taking UC Online classes. The non-UC students will also earn UC credits, but at a cost: $350 per quarter unit and $525 per semester unit, or $1,400 to $2,100 for a typical course.
For winter and spring, UC and non-UC students alike can choose more UC Davis courses, including Professor Robert Blake’s “Elementary Spanish,” nutrition professor Roger McDonald’s “Physiology and Aging” and Professor Carl Whithaus’ “Expository Writing.”
Not to mention “Terrorism and War”— from a professor of entomology, James Carey, who launched the course in 2003 to “introduce students to critical thinking and important contemporary topics in science.” He focused initially on bioterrorism, then expanded the content to include more overarching concepts of national security.
Carey's course, developed in partnership with the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, enables students to engage, through video and question-and-answer sessions, with some of the nation’s foremost military strategists.
Such interaction would be time- and cost-prohibitive in a face-to-face environment.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for students to be introduced to the experts who brief the top military officers crafting strategies for the Middle East. These experts offer perspectives no one else has," Carey says.
UC Online, as it begins its second year, is keeping the door open to other online instruction programs and is working collaboratively with initiatives at individual UC campuses that include degree-granting programs and MOOCs.
The program also is trying to improve what is now a cumbersome process of cross-campus enrollment, for UC students who wish to enroll in other campuses’ online classes.
“Online learning is by definition an evolving field,” says UC Davis professor Keith Williams, interim director of UC Online. “Our primary objective is to create dynamic, academically rich experiences that advance the UC undergraduate curriculum. How we do that best is something that we are, to some degree, still learning.
"But the University of California has always set the pace for undergraduate instruction, and we're looking to continue that leadership in an environment that is becoming more and more intrinsic to how students learn.”