Welcome to the "bCourses Essentials: Building Effective Courses" learning path! This is your gateway to becoming proficient with bCourses (Canvas), Berkeley’s learning management system. This path is packed with a variety of resources—from essential guides on basic functionalities to more advanced topics. Whether you're just starting out or looking to deepen your Canvas skills, you'll find sessions that match your needs. Dive into the components that interest you the most; there’s no set sequence to follow—choose what fits your level of expertise and learning style. Think of this as your learning buffet; sample different topics and come back for more whenever you're ready to further enhance your bCourses expertise!
Your guide for engaging with this Learning Path:
In this Learning Path, we use a variety of engagement methods to ensure flexibility and cater to the different ways you absorb and process information. Each component is marked by specific terms to guide you:
- Attend: Join live workshops where real-time interaction is key.
- Read: Access text-based resources to explore at your own pace.
- Watch: Engage with video content to visualize and understand concepts.
Getting Started with bCourses
- Attend: bCourses (Canvas) Basics & New Features: Teaching with bCourses Survival Guide | Jan 13
Join this workshop for an introduction to bCourses (Canvas), Berkeley’s learning management system. Perfect for beginners or those needing a refresher, this session covers essential features like Pages, Modules, Assignments, and Announcements, as well as basic site setup and navigation to help you effectively organize and manage your courses.
View details and register for this workshop
This resource provides help guides on setting up and managing your bCourses sites, organizing content, communicating with students, and setting up assignments and gradebooks. For any bCourses questions, you can receive customized assistance by emailing bcourseshelp@berkeley.edu, or by scheduling a 1:1 consultation.
Organizing your bCourses Site
1. Using Modules: Well-organized Canvas modules provide an effective way for both you and your students to navigate through your course content. Amid the rush before semester kick-off, it's tempting to treat Canvas just as a file repository. File structures in courses often cater to instructors' organizational needs but may not be as intuitive for students. A typical structure with separate folders for lectures, readings, and assignments can lead students to jump between folders for one class period, causing difficulty in locating specific files. Module design organizes your material into a structure that is easily navigable by students. It allows them to access what they need in the course when they need it simply by clicking the “next” arrow at the bottom of a Canvas page. Organized by weeks, units, or chapters, Modules present content in the sequence it's needed, with clear naming conventions for easy identification.
- Read: Review the guide on how to use Modules to create consistent navigation throughout your bCourses site to to learn how to set up your bCourses using Modules to organize your assignments, discussions, files, and more.
- Watch:View the video guide to learn how to Organize Course Content with Modules. The visual demonstration walks you through the process step-by-step, ensuring that you can create a student-friendly course structure.
You can also receive customized assistance by emailing bcourseshelp@berkeley.eduor by scheduling a 1:1 consultation
2. Using the "Core Template": The Core Template allows you to import a module and page structured site that you can update to meet your course needs. It offers a consistent organization that ensures students can easily access materials and engage with your course without the need to learn any additional tools.You can receive customized assistance by emailing designtoolshelp@berkeley.edu, or by scheduling a consultation
Different Ways to Make your bCourses Site more Accessible
1. Use the Accessibility Checker (Ally): Ally is a set of tools within bCourses that helps make course content more accessible by delivering the following functionality:
- Allows students to automatically generate alternative formats of your course materials, such as tagged PDF, HTML, BeeLine Reader, Electronic Braille, ePub, Immersive Reader, MP3, and translated versions, enhancing accessibility. Watch the tutorial on Ally for students at UC Berkeley to learn about this feature.
- Provides instructors with accessibility scores next to uploaded course documents and images so instructors can learn how to create more accessible content. Next to your uploaded course documents and images, Ally displays colored dials indicating accessibility scores. These scores help you identify and resolve barriers to accessibility. Click on a dial to view specific issues and suggestions for improvement. Watch the tutorial for instructors using bCourses to learn about this feature.
- Reviews and remediates bCourses Page content using the WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) Instructor Feedback Tool. When editing course pages that use the Rich Content Editor, you'll see an Ally feedback indicator in the top right corner. This tool provides real-time, contextualized guidance to help you create accessible materials. Click the score icon to start enhancing specific content accessibility. ReadAlly WYSIWYG Instructor Feedback Tool to learn more.
- Identifies and fixes accessibility problems in your bCourses site using the Ally Course Accessibility Report. This report gives an overall accessibility summary of your course materials, available through the course navigation. To enable this feature:
- Go to your course “Settings” and select "Navigation."
- Find the Ally Course Accessibility Report, select the three vertical dots, and choose "Enable."
- Save your changes. Now, selecting the Ally Course Accessibility Report in your course navigation will open an interactive dashboard that displays accessibility scores and issues.
For any Ally related questions, You can receive customized assistance by emailing allyhelp@berkeley.edu or by scheduling a 1:1 consultation
2. Simplify Course Navigation for Easy Access
The Course Navigation Menu is a series of links on the left side of your course that help you and your students access different course areas. As an instructor, you can control which links appear in Course Navigation. bCourses includes a set of default Course Navigation links that are shown by default. You can adjust the navigation menu by disabling unnecessary links and moving frequently used ones to the top. This ensures students can quickly find what they need, improving accessibility and reducing confusion.
3. Walk Students Through Your bCourses Site
Each bCourses site a student sees will be different from the last. Help students navigate your bCourses site by providing a clear introduction at the start of the course. Use Student View to walk them through key features, such as the syllabus, reading materials, and assignments. Highlight how to use tools like Ally for accessible file formats, closed captions, and transcripts, and share instructions for contacting you with questions.
Accessibility Basics for bCourses
Engage: When curating digital content for your course, it's crucial to keep accessibility in mind. Delve into this self-paced course to familiarize yourself with accessibility basics for bCourses. This course is designed to help you develop accessible instructional materials within bCourses using best practices. As you apply the recommended changes, your course's accessibility will improve, making learning more inclusive for all students. In this course you’ll learn to:
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Add alternative text for images
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Caption your videos
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Use color effectively
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Structure content with headings
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Promote screen reader compatibility
Here are the links to acces the course:
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Accesibility Basics for bCourses Direct link (Does not require CalNet authentication)
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Accesibility Basics for bCourses Self-enrollment link (Requires CalNet authentication and the course will be added to your bCourses Dashboard.)
Assignments and Grading in bCourses
- Attend: Assignments and Grading: Build Your Gradebook in bCourses | Jan 28
Join this workshop to learn how to set up and manage your Gradebook effectively. Explore features like weighting grades, configuring Grade Posting Policy, creating Assignment Groups, applying grading rules, and setting up assignments with Gradebook columns tailored to your teaching needs.
View details and register for this workshop.
This resource offers a comprehensive guide for instructors on setting up assignments and managing the Gradebook in bCourses. It includes a step-by-step workflow covering the creation of assignment groups, individual assignments, publishing assignments, weighting assignment groups, setting grade posting policies, and grading submissions.
You can also receive customized assistance by emailing bcourseshelp@berkeley.eduor by scheduling a 1:1 consultation
Administering Quizzes & Exams in bCourses
Discover how to make your courses more interactive and fun with quizzes on bCourses. This feature allows you to create quizzes from scratch, explore a variety of question types to keep assessments diverse, and customize settings to meet your students' unique needs, including accommodations through the "Moderate This Quiz" feature. Plus, grading submissions is a breeze with the SpeedGrader tool.
- Read: Review the guide on how to create and edit quizzes in bCourses to learn how to enhance your courses with engaging quizzes. The guide provides detailed instructions on creating quizzes, exploring various question types, customizing quiz settings for diverse student needs, and using the SpeedGrader tool to grade submissions efficiently.
- Watch: View the following videos for a step-by-step demonstration on how to use the bCourses Quiz tool:
You can receive customized assistance by emailing bcourseshelp@berkeley.edu or by scheduling a 1:1 consultation.
Implement Student Accommodations in bCourses
Students may receive academic accommodations from Disabled Students' Program including flexible course arrangements, exam modifications, note-taking support, alternative formats for materials, and interpreting and captioning services. There are several features in bCourses that allow for these accommodations to be applied.
Read: Making Extended Time, Multiple Attempts, and Assignment Accommodations in bCourses Quick Guide
This resource offers a comprehensive guide for UC Berkeley instructors on implementing the following accommodations in bCourses for students with Letters of Accommodation (LOAs):
- Granting extended time for quizzes and exams.
- Allowing multiple or additional attempts on assessments.
- Extending assignment deadlines for individual students
For more information about LOAs please visit Instructor Guide to DSP Accommodations webpage.
Creating Audio and Video Instructional Materials with DIY Media and Kaltura
Explore the process of creating audio and video materials for your courses through the guide "Create Audio and Video Instructional Materials." It covers everything from DIY media creation to leveraging Kaltura, a robust web-based video management platform that supports uploading, editing, managing, and sharing videos and other media. This resource provides detailed instructions on planning and producing your own multimedia content and you’ll learn how to effectively integrate these resources into your bCourses.
For any questions about Kaltura, please email kalturahelp@berkeley.edu or schedule a 1:1 consultation.
For questions about the DIY Media, please email diy-media@berkeley.edu.