News

The 2013-2014 academic year was an exciting and challenging year for the ETS team. Throughout the last year ETS has utilized knowledge and know-how in both educational and information technology pedagogy to provide the campus with a new learning management system, a simplified online student experience, online evaluations, and more, in support of Chancellor Dirks’ campus objectives. 

ETS is proud of its accomplishments and looks forward to the opportunities the next year holds.

Now that you're back on campus, we wanted to make sure that you feel comfortable using iclicker in your course. Here is some information that you might find useful at the beginning of the term.  

New to clickers? Basic information can be found http://ets.berkeley.edu/clickers.

If you used iclicker and bCourses last fall, we have improved the tool to work better. Please note that there is new software and set up instructions.

Updates

1 - Software

Instructors, Faculty, and GSI's are invited to join us for the ETS Open House Thursday, January 15, 2015. 11am - 1 pm. Join our campus experts as we share information on our broad range of services supporting teaching and learning on campus. As questions, see demos and get your semester started off right.

The Learning Management System Replacement Project will reach two important milestones in the next few days with changes to both bSpace and bCourses which will impact the campus community. 
The last day for the creation of new bSpaces project sites is October 31, 2014. Existing sites in bSpace will remain accessible through June 30, 2015. 

CalCentral, v.45: In addition to a number of significant enhancements, this release introduces a feature allowing students to add and maintain their course schedule in their primary bCal calendar. This feature is disabled by default and only available to students who connect CalCentral to their bConnected account. See below for how to enable the feature.

ETS is excited for the Fall 2014 semester. Our service teams have been working throughout the summer to prepare for new students, new technologies, and ways to enhance teaching and learning on campus. Below is a quick summary of items instructors should know about from ETS. 

ETS Orientation and Open House 

August 26, 9am - 3pm 

Dwinelle 127 (Level D)

Join ETS to learn more about our services and get hands-on help. 

During the Spring and Summer 2014 terms, the bCourses team in Educational Technology Services (ETS) has been working diligently to assist campus with the new functionality and features of bCourses. Spring semester witnessed over 30% of possible course sites utilize bCourses and 50% of summer course sites have utilized bCourses to enhance the teaching and learning opportunities on campus. This Fall we have partnered with the Haas School of Business and Berkeley Law to add all of their courses to bCourses.

As part of the digital transition, Educational Technology Services (ETS) is rolling out high definition audio/visual equipment in supported General Assignment Classrooms (GAC) in the coming semesters. 

What is the "analog sunset" and how does it impact classroom technology?

The "analog sunset" is the broad term being used to describe the transition to digital display technologies that is currently ongoing within the electronics industry. As the analog sunset progresses, new electronic devices will no longer be able to interface with older analog devices and vice-versa. In addition, most of the major PC manufacturers have announced that beginning in 2013, they will be removing VGA entirely from their computers.

Did you know that manufacturers are no longer making VCRs? Although many technology classrooms include the ability to play a VHS tape, the format is now a legacy technology. Find out what you can do today to preserve your media and ensure you can play your content tomorrow.

Enjoy your summer by taking something off your Fall to-do list now. Sign-up today for bCourses and request a Webcast-capable classroom from your schedulers.

Recently, users have experienced problems using the Web Content tool in bSpace (ie. linked pages show up blank). The reason for this is due to changes in default web browser security settings. We recommend using the steps outlined here, to make sure your students can view those links.

In Spring 2014, campus will begin the transition to bCourses, Berkeley's new Learning Management System (LMS) powered by Canvas.  For more information, go to: http://ets.berkeley.edu/bcourses

Phasing out Overhead Transparency Projectors

Starting in Spring 2014, ETS will no longer provide overhead transparancy projection equipment for loan and in general assignment classrooms. If you are planning on displaying transparancies, you do have a couple of options.

As Fall semester gets underway, we'd like all of our users to review this list of tips and answers to commonly asked questions. Doing so might very well address your question and save you time. Thank you.

 Important updates for all our users

 In order to improve the stability and performance of bSpace, ETS updated it this summer to the 2.9 version of Sakai. This article describes the key changes brought with this update. Be sure to review this before you start developing your course site.

In order to ensure bSpace's stability for the next two years and to take advantage of new features developed by the Sakai community, ETS recently completed an update to bSpace. This update to Sakai 2.9 is part of a two-year project currently underway, aimed at improving the teaching and learning capabilities of the campus' LMS. You can read more about the LMS project here.

With its Summer 2013 pilot well underway, ETS is engaged in evaluating the Canvas LMS from a variety of perspectives and with input from many key campus stakeholders.