For the students, staff, faculty, and administrators of the University of California (UC), the six Regents meetings that take place throughout the year are crucially important. With 10 campuses across California, technology plays a key role in making these meetings accessible to as many of the UC’s stakeholders as possible. Live-streaming and posting the Regents deliberations to the web means the events can be accessed in dorm rooms and offices across our Golden State and anyone with a phone screen or a laptop can stay up-to-date with the high-level decisions affecting them.
March 10, 2017
March 9, 2017
During Spring 2017, Educational Technology Services is evaluating and piloting some enhancements to bCourses developed by other organizations:
Ally (http://ally.ac)
The Ally accessibility checker integrates with bCourses files, and allows instructors and students to identify and remediate files and other course content that may not be fully accessible to students. UC Berkeley is evaluating Ally in collaboration with the UC Office of the President.
Beginning in April 2017, new course sites created using the "Create A Site" tool will automatically append term information to the end of the course title. This text can be modified or removed by an instructor as they see fit.
This change is intended to support instructors who teach the same course across multiple semesters, allowing them to more easily locate the appropriate offering of the course when navigating through bCourses, especially when using dropdown menus in bCourses communications tools.
March 6, 2017
Moffit Library is a hub of campus energy and ideas, and if the newly renovated upstairs feels like a tech start-up, the new basement feels like Steve Jobs’ garage in the 21st century with the introduction of a student makerspace. As a free-to-use, collaborative, and community-operated space, it serves anyone on the Berkeley campus interested in the cutting-edge technology of 3D printing and fabrication.
March 1, 2017
Campus announces important changes to the legacy course capture content found at webcast.berkeley.edu
February 28, 2017
From 9:50am until 3:00pm on Tuesday, February 28, bCourses was intermittently unavailable to students and faculty. This unscheduled outage was caused by a large-scale Amazon Web Services hosting issue affecting many websites.
As of 3pm, Canvas reports that all known performance issues have been resolved. UC Berkeley and Canvas staff will continue monitoring bCourses for any further issues or downtime. More information on this outage is available at: http://status.instructure.com/
February 22, 2017
A flashy promo video invites you to apply to a conference where over 7000 participants gather to present, share, and network with like-minded individuals. It is billed as the “premier convening of IT professionals and technology providers across the diverse higher education landscape.” The keynote speakers promise to deliver inspirational talks that you will take with you back to your home institution. At the same time, panel presentations await that will invite you to stay on the cutting-edge for your school’s students and faculty.
February 13, 2017
There is a known issue with the third-party plugin, LastPass, that is causing assignment uploads in Canvas to stall.
February 9, 2017
Effective Fall 2017, UC Berkeley will be retiring the BlueJeans videoconferencing service (https://technology.berkeley.edu/news/changes-video-web-conferencing-services-2017). As a result of this change, ETS will remove the BlueJeans integration from bCourses after the Spring 2017 semester. More detailed information about the timeline for this process, and any new videoconferencing integrations for bCourses, will be announced later this year.
February 8, 2017
Beginning the week of 2/13/2017 ETS will be making changes to our website support process as we continue to develop our partnership with CSS-IT.
February 7, 2017
The start of a new year is a great time look back at the previous year. Below are some highlights on the progress that our team has achieved in supporting the UC Berkeley academic experience with responsive, essential, and innovative technology services. In 2017 we look forward to continuing support for students, faculty, and administrators in achieving their goals in our increasingly connected world.
February 1, 2017
Due to a CalCentral update, the following bCourses tools will be unavailable on Thursday, February 2, from 6-7am:
- Create a Site
- E-grades Export
- Official Sections
- Roster Photos
- Course Capture
This will not affect other bCourses tools or functionality. Please reach out to bcourseshelp@berkeley.edu if you have any questions or experience any issues related to this outage.
Berkeley Video's Executive Producer and the Director of Photography discusses film, video production, and sharing UC Regents meetings via the web.
January 25, 2017
Phising Scam Reported: You are not losing your access to bCourses
January 24, 2017
January 23, 2017
Update, Wednesday January 25: Normal performance of the Create A Site and Official Sections has been restored. ETS staff are continuing to monitor for additional issues. Please contact bcourseshelp@berkeley.edu if you have any problems using these tools.
January 18, 2017
Update -- 10am, January 23: The fix for these issues was fully deployed over the weekend, and users should no longer experience errors when using the tools listed in this announcement. ETS will continue monitoring for any new errors or issues.
Update -- 11am, January 20: Error rates for the tools listed in this announcement have declined significantly; however, work on the full fix remains underway, and will be complete this evening (Friday 1/20).
January 14, 2017
Due to a CalCentral update, the following bCourses tools will be unavailable on Tuesday, January 17 starting at 6am, and could last up to two hours.
January 11, 2017
This email was sent on January 11, 2017 to instructors using or interested in using clickers.
Dear Clicker user: