UC Berkeley’s Semester in the Cloud (SitC) consisted of programs that supported instructors as they improved the quality of remote teaching and learning. Past programs have included the 2021 Spring Enhanced Remote Course Design/Delivery Services at Scale and the Fall 2020 Remote Enhanced Cohort. The Summer Fully Online Course Conversions were recently completed and are now running and the Fall 2021 Remote Enhanced Cohort is underway.
As part of the SitC program, Research, Teaching, and Learning (RTL) offers a set of four summer workshops for instructors and GSIs preparing to teach remote courses and sections. These virtual workshops focus on how to (re)design courses or sections to increase student learning, create engaging audio and video materials, use campus tools to record those materials, and improve the accessibility of course materials. Registration is open for all campus community members via the Upcoming Events page.
In addition, Digital Learning Services (DLS) and the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) offer training open to anyone on DIY media creation/distribution, instructional technology, pedagogy and student engagement. Explore opportunities(link is external)
All questions can be directed to digitallearning@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail)(link sends e-mail).
DLS provides services to assist in the improvement of the quality of support of instructors campus-wide during remote instruction semesters with five key components:
- templates designed to help instructors quickly organize and build content and instruction within bCourses
- 1:1 consultations with Instructional Designers
- synchronous trainings and workshops
- asynchronous training materials and resources
- help desk support
Visit our Course Design Tools service page(link is external) for more information.
Of the Fall Enhanced Remote Cohort, a subset of courses will be converted to fully online to be ready for Summer Sessions 2021 launch. These conversions take advantage of the hard work instructors and staff put into the fall, and with a lighter lift can be moved to fully online because instructional design, learning content creation, and remote learning strategies are most of the way there. Overall and ongoing even after in-person instruction resumes, this component of SitC increases the number of high quality, fully online courses which will allow students and faculty flexibility and access to teaching and learning and relieves impaction due to classroom space and capacity constraints. It also provides revenue generation opportunities for UC Berkeley, colleges/departments and schools, and aligns with UC Berkeley’s Digital Learning Strategy.
This fall 31 gateway, critical path, high-impact and high-freshman enrolled courses across 19 departments and nine colleges/divisions were chosen to be part of this initial cohort. Faculty in the program were paired with staff specializing in instructional design, digital pedagogy and audio/video production for guidance in digital learning design and delivery, digital learning strategies, and technical implementation of content within our UC Berkeley Learning Management System, bCourses, for remote instruction. In addition to the dedicated expert partnerships with Digital Learning Services (DLS) and support from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) from June - December, they were also given an instructor stipend, funding for a graduate student stipend, home recording and presentation equipment, and cohort-focused workshops and MeetUps. SitC fall enrollments comprised 13% of total fall undergraduate enrollments at UC Berkeley.