News

The bCourses Gradebook now supports scheduling grades and feedback releases. Instructors can preconfigure the automatic release of grades and comments (together or separately) for individual assignments.

Pronouns in bCourses Display Now Live

As part of the Gender Recognition and Lived Name Policy, as of January 8, 2026, pronouns now display for users in bCourses who have opted to share them. Pronouns are sourced from official campus systems of record (CalCentral and/or UC Path) and will automatically be updated in bCourses in the same way that lived names are synced.

Starting for the Spring 2026 semester, instructors can use a new feature in bCourses called Discussion Checkpoints to set multiple due dates for graded discussions.

RTL is changing the way the Zoom to Kaltura integration works. Starting on January 6, 2026, Zoom cloud recordings will be copied to Kaltura *only* for users that have indicated that they need this integration to continue to function in order to accomplish their instructional goals.

Starting October 31, 2025, advertisements may start displaying on any YouTube video embedded in bCourses. This is due to a change in how the bCourses vendor (Instructure) works with YouTube. Before playing the video, viewers will see a message letting viewers know that ads may be displayed before, during, or after the video. These ads are controlled by YouTube and cannot be disabled in bCourses by instructors, students, or admins.

Update September 19, 2025: Google has removed the “Homework Help” feature from Canvas pages with the latest Chrome update. However, the functionality can still be accessed by manually launching "Search with Google Lens" from the Chrome settings menu or using the "Ask Google about this page" option in the browser URL bar.

Gradescope LTI 1.3 is now available in bCourses. LTI 1.3 improves on 1.0 in several key ways, including increased security, and roster syncing that allows for syncing multiple sections from bCourses.

Update — 5/19/25: The upgrade to the v7 Player has been completed

Please see our KB article, “What's new in the Kaltura v7 player?”. If you encounter any issues with Kaltura media players, please email kalturahelp@berkeley.edu

Modules, module items, pages, and ungraded discussions can now be assigned to everyone, specific sections, or individual students in bCourses. These updates are intended to improve the ability to differentiate instruction of their course content.

What’s new: 

UPDATE -  AUGUST 29, 2024: Based on user feedback, the vendor has rolled back the “Assign To…” tray interface described below, reverting to the original design for assigning due dates and assignees. 

As of July 20, all users will see a new interface when interacting with Discussions or Announcements in bCourses. The updated interfaces include a modernized look and some added features. No functionality has been removed.

Between June 19 and June 27, 2024, did you do an import of bCourses content (e.g. from a previous course) that contained Kaltura media ? If so, the embeds may not function in the imported content due to a Canvas bug, if you used the “Select specific content” option (instead of the alternative "All content"):

The story so far

Have you ever wished that you could automatically send a message to students as soon as they enroll in your course? The bCourses Welcome Email feature is designed to do exactly this! While you can send an announcement at any time, students who enroll later might miss it. The Welcome Email is designed to solve this problem.

In preparation for the Spring 2024 term, we will be making an updated Zoom-bCourses integration available to all instructors. The newer integration is actively supported by Zoom and receives regular feature improvements. Read about the new features

Please note: the change that this article describes has been rolled back as of 11/26/23. The current behavior is that Zoom alternative hosts do NOT become Kaltura co-hosts or co-collaborators. 

An update to the Zoom to Kaltura integration made by Kaltura in early October benefits many Zoom users who have wanted colleagues (co-instructors, GSI’s,staff, etc) to be able to manage the recording files copied to Kaltura via the integration. 

We are happy to announce a new batch of features and fixes for the SuiteC collaboration tools:

SuiteC Fall 21 Update

When we re-built the SuiteC tools earlier this year, we prioritized the popular Asset Library and Engagement Index tools and made the decision to retire the native whiteboard tool and support use of the many available third party whiteboard tools. Our first major update to SuiteC includes a number of ways to make it easier to bring these external whiteboards into the Asset Library.