When adding lectures, ensure consistency in your layout so that students can follow a pattern; make a statement when you deviate from it. This will increase ‘findability’ and reduce time lost on tasks and frustration levels (Simunich, et al., 2012). bCourses Pages can be used to create a pattern layout for your units of study.
In the Core Template
Week 1 is set up in the page format in the template. You are welcome to edit the layout to create your pattern and designated space for your lectures.
It is important to provide a downloadable syllabus to your bCourses site for ease of access. Some instructors add the class schedule to the syllabus or use the course calendar with dated assignments to populate a schedule in the Syllabus section. There is also space provided on the Syllabus page to add text. Some professors post a table of their grading criteria or special notes.
In the Core Template
There is an accessible syllabus template for you to download and use on the Syllabus page. Download it and add your syllabus...
Weekly landing pages are an excellent way to keep your course organized so that students have easy access to relevant course content. Ensuring that students can successfully navigate your course site means that all of their time and focus can be directed to the course. Establishing appropriate heading structure will ensure that your pages are accessible to screen readers, and incorporating images will not only lend an aesthetic appeal to the pages, but will also give students the opportunity to explore course content more thoroughly.
In addition to using the Core Template, in bCourses you can import content such as assignments, modules, pages, and discussions from previous courses using the Course Import tool. This is a quick way to transfer previously created content into your new course site to compliment the template resources.
Please take note of the following:
You only have access to copy content from current or previous courses in which you are an enrolled user. Importing a content more than once may have unintended consequences...
When students access your bCourses site for the first time, it’s as if they are walking into your classroom. How will you welcome them to the class and make sure they know where to get started? You can do this by setting a Homepage in your bCourses site that includes clear information about the course, how to get started, and welcoming materials and activities. This will ensure students are excited to engage with you and their classmates and can get started without any confusion.
Quality Assurance (QA) is the process of checking the technical components of your course site before students have access to it. This process includes confirming all links function correctly, materials are fully accessible, and materials you'd like students to access are published, or conversely, materials you'd like hidden until a certain date are not visible to students. There are two key tools available in bCourses that help streamline QA: Course Link Validator and Ally Instructor Report. Additionally, DLS has developed a bCourses...
Join us for a workshop on bCourses's grading features. Dive into tools like SpeedGrader, effective rubric setup, and Gradebook management to maximize your efficiency and grading accuracy.
Check for Accessibility with the Ally Instructor Report
The Ally tool in bCourses identifies if images and files in your course site are formatted for accessibility. It then provides guidance on how to edit materials that are currently not in accessible formats, a process called remediation. As you add links to documents or embed images on your weekly landing pages, you may notice the green, orange, and red meters next to the files identifying if the materials are fully, partially, or not accessible, respectively. The Ally tool indicates the problem when you...
When Berkeley first switched to the bCourses (Canvas) learning management system in 2014, there were a number of custom tools the vendor could not provide that we built ourselves. We’ve maintained these tools over the years, but recent changes in software architecture required us to rebuild them from the ground up. For the past several months, we have been gradually updating these tools. We’ve already released new versions of the Roster Photos and Mailing Lists tools. Last week, we replaced the underlying processes that sync enrollments between bCourses and...
