[Updated 6/30/2017]
This email was sent on June 2, 2017 to Summer Session B, C and D instructors.
Instructors and Students,
bCourses will be available during the upcoming outage; however, some tools and features will be unavilable to instructors. See full list below.
Access bCourses directly at: bCourses.berkeley.edu
Effective July 31, 2017, the iThenticate service will no longer be offered by UC Berkeley. This difficult decision was driven by a combination of low usage and the high cost of making iThenticate available at Berkeley.
Here at UC Berkeley, we have a reputation for using cutting-edge technology and tools to affect social change. As the world’s number one public university, it’s in our DNA to use our combined talents and skills for the good of others.
In 1956, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) was founded as the first research institute devoted to the study of systems, processes, and institutions of higher learning. Dedicated to promoting an interdisciplinary view of the role of higher education in the public sector, it focuses on all aspects of the policy landscape from the international arena to the California community.
Update, 4/5/17, 6pm: The vendor has resolved the problems that were causing the document preview tool to not render files. If you continue to experience issues, please report them to us by submitting support request.
As part of a feature update, the Chat tool will be unavailable for approximately 24 hours starting this Friday, March 31.
You can read more about the changes to the tool in the upcoming Canvas Production Release Notes.
Update, 9:30am: Canvas is reporting 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/.
If you experience any issues, please contact us.
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.
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.
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.
Campus announces important changes to the legacy course capture content found at webcast.berkeley.edu
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/
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.