I am CoPI of the Cheminformatics OLCC project, and an Associate Professor at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, where I run the Cheminformatics and Chemogenomics Research Group (CCRG). Since 2004, I have been running a graduate cheminformatics program there, offering Ph.D., M.S. degrees and certificates in Cheminformatics, with an emphasis on distance education. I have previously run graduate classes in cheminformatics using a variety of remote technologies, including videoconferencing, web conferencing, wikis and the CIC Courseshare program. Most recently, I created the Indiana Cheminformatics Education Portal of free cheminformatics learning materials, along with an associated low cost Introducing Cheminformatics eBook. I also run a Cheminformatics Education Google+ Group for discussion of cheminformatics education resources and opportunities.
I am excited about the OLCC for many reasons. Here are three of them. First, it broadens cheminformatics education to undergraduate chemistry students, helping them prepare for practising chemistry in a world awash with technology and informatics. Second, it is part of a huge experiment currently happening in higher education, in taking the best educational resources and making them accessible to as wide a range of people as possible, using online approaches such as MOOCs. Third, I think of the OLCC like a "MOOC 2.0" in that we can not only encapsulate the knowledge of the best minds and teachers in the field of cheminformatics and make them available to students online, but we will preserve the great benefits of traditional education by having local facilitators running the classes for participating institutions.
You can find more about me at http://about.me/djwild