RTL actively pilots academic technology to support the teaching and learning mission of UC Berkeley. Learn about some of our current pilots and how you may be able to participate in using these new tools.
The UC Berkeley Grade Distribution Tool is a new feature embedded within the bCourses learning management system (LMS) designed to provide instructors with detailed insights into student final grades across multiple dimensions. This tool is currently in a pilot phase and available to instructors on an opt-in basis.
Requirements: Because this tool is intended to aggregate trends across large groups of students over a number of terms, we are currently seeking instructors teaching courses with >50 students that have been taught 4 or more times by the same instructor. Currently, the tool is populated with final grade data from SIS/CalCentral, so the tool will be installed in a prior term bCourses site and is intended to be used for retrospective analysis.
Flextensions is an assignment extension management tool created by UC Berkeley students and faculty at EECS and is supported by Research, Teaching, and Learning. Flextensions is your one-stop solution to manage and access assignment extensions across all your UC Berkeley courses. If you’re interested in joining the pilot and are willing to give feedback about the tool, please submit an interest form.
jupyterLab-a11y-checker is a JupyterLab extension that helps authors detect and fix accessibility issues in Jupyter Notebooks, aligning with WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. It enables authors to identify accessibility issues in their notebooks and provides actionable suggestions to fix them. Issues include insufficient color contrast, missing or improperly organized headers, images with missing alt text, missing table headers, and links without purpose. Instructors can contact datahub-support@berkeley.edu to have the extension installed on their DataHubs.
RTL piloted the aPlus+ Attendance Tool during Summer and Fall 2025 to support UC Berkeley instructors with a flexible and automated approach to tracking student attendance. Integrated with bCourses, aPlus+ Attendance allows instructors to record attendance directly within their course site, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy.
