This weekend, a minor configuration change was made to the bCourses-CalNet integration, which resulted in a small number of bCourses users receiving a "Failed to Log In" error message when attempting to access any course or project site.
February 3, 2016
January 14, 2016
As a follow-up to our announcement in December that ETS will be supporting i>clicker version 7, we want to alert you to the possible need for a firmware upgrade. The vendor has recently let us know that some older white base stations (likely those from Spring 2014 and earlier) will need a firmware update.
January 13, 2016
Educational Technology Services (ETS) is proud to take part in Cal Day 2016, which takes place Saturday, April 16. ETS provides support for audio-visual technology on campus and we invite you to take advantage of our Cal Day services.
In keeping with our Cal Day tradition we are offering most of our services free of charge. However, due to the volume of events occurring on Cal Day the scope of our services will be limited to:
We hope that the new year and semester is off to a great start for all of you! This bCourses update includes International SMS notifications, as well as a call to participate in a pilot for an exciting new tool called Collabosphere.
December 21, 2015
Happy Holidays! We hope that everyone had a great semester, and that your holidays are restful, warm, and filled with joy. There are some new features and updates in bCourses that we'd like to share as we look forward to a new year and a new semester.
December 18, 2015
Educational Technology Services (ETS) will observe the annual campus curtailment December 24, 2015 – January 3, 2016. Staff support will be limited during this time.
December 17, 2015
Between 7am–11am on Saturday, December 19, Turnitin services will be intermittently unavailable due to scheduled system maintenance. This may prevent instructors from reviewing existing Originality Check reports, and will delay the creation of Originality Check reports for student assignments made to Turnitin-enabled assignments during this four-hour window.
If you encounter any Turnitin-related issues or have any questions about the service, please email academicintegrity@berkeley.edu for further assistance.
December 14, 2015
This morning, 12/14/15 from about 8:00 AM PST to 8:40 AM PST, some users may not have been able to view assignment submissions from the Speedgrader due to an issue with Crocodoc.
Updated 1/14/2016
Some older white base stations will need a firmware update to work with version 7. If you obtained your base station prior to 2015, you’ll want to determine if you need this firmware update prior to running your first class. For details, see our Help article.
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December 9, 2015
Some users have reported not being able to log into the CalNet Authentication System this morning (Wednesday, 12/9/15) when they are using the Google Chrome browser.
December 7, 2015
Earlier today (approximately 11:30am) approximately 3,300 students using the Course Evaluations system erroneously received multiple email notifications for courses they have already dropped due to the vendor experiencing technical issues. The issue has been resolved and no evaluation data was lost. Any evaluations that may have been incorrectly completed during this incident have been removed.
ETS and the vendor, Explorance, are working to ensure this problem does not happen again. We apologize for any inconvenience.
December 4, 2015
UPDATED 12/08/2015: 2:30pm
Issue Resolved
Course Evaluations is experiencing intermittent login issues. (https://course-evaluations.berkeley.edu)
December 3, 2015
At around 4p on Thursday, 12/03/15, the CalNet authentication service experienced an outage that is preventing users from logging into secured UC Berkeley sites that require a CalNet ID, which include bCourses and CalCentral.
November 30, 2015
UPDATE: 11/30/15, 10:50 AM
Canvas has resolved the technical issues that caused this morning's slowness. bCourses is fully operational. You may need to refresh your browser to continue your work.
You can find more information on the Canvas system status page: http://status.instructure.com/
ORIGINAL MESSAGE: 11/30/15, 9:50 AM
Users are experiencing system slowness and/or are being timed out of bCourses this morning, 11/30/15, due to technical issues with our vendor, Canvas.
November 24, 2015
The 2014-2015 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 technology to support Academic Integrity, a new User Advisory Group, and innovate teaching and learning collaboration tool, and more.
ETS is proud of its accomplishments and looks forward to the opportunities the next year holds.
On November 19th, bConnected, Educational Technology Services, and Research IT co-sponsored a Town Hall, Powering Communication Across Campus. The two-hour One IT event gave Berkeley staff, faculty, and researchers the chance to learn about how various departments are working together to support collaboration across campus.
November 20, 2015
We hope that the Fall semester has been a good one for you and your students! We’d like to share some new updates to bCourses, as well as offer support, especially for grading, communication, and Clickers to help you finish out the term.
November 18, 2015
Our LMS vendor, Canvas, will be performing system-wide maintenance on Tuesday, November 24 between 11:15 PM to 1:15 AM PST. During this time, all users will experience about 15 minutes (or less) of downtime where we will be unable to access or use bCourses.
November 3, 2015
This article includes updates from the October 10 Canvas Release Notes.
October 23, 2015
In some bCourses Assignments with Turnitin enabled, Originality Check reports are not being automatically generated when a student submits their work. Canvas and Turnitin are currently working on a resolution to this issue.