Campus to Expand Use of Online Class Portal

A new Internet portal for students and faculty to exchange information is set to enter widespread use this fall, allowing students to access information for multiple classes from a single Web site.

UC Berkeley's new electronic "collaboration and learning environment"-bSpace-will replace current class management tools Blackboard, WebCT and CourseWeb by the end of the school year, said Victor Edmonds, director of Educational Technology Services on campus.

The campus began testing the software last year, with 40 faculty members taking part in a trial run of the software, said Karen Miles, who is heading the transition to the bSpace system.

More than 200 classes will use bSpace in the coming semester. Although some faculty have chosen to keep using Blackboard for certain features, the campus plans to phase out other systems completely by 2007.

Like current software, bSpace allows professors to make announcements, distribute documents and even create online quizzes.

But the tool also offers a new feature that enables faculty to collaborate with each other using a wiki tool, similar to the one used by the popular Wikipedia Web site.

The most significant departure from older systems, however, is bSpace's integration with other online campus online resources.

Currently, students must sign up for each class Web site individually. With bSpace, class Web sites are linked to the registrar's database, allowing for automatic updates of online class rosters.

The portal is also linked to the campus' schedule of classes and the campus directory, Miles said.

The primary reason for the switch to bSpace from previous systems, according to Edmonds, was to give the campus more control over the software in use.

"The main reason was more control. We didn't want our destiny in the hands of some other company," Edmonds said.

Earlier systems were created and owned by separate companies, which charge the campus a licensing fee.

On the other hand, bSpace is UC Berkeley's version of software developed by the Sakai Project, a group of universities who are trying to create an open-source class management tool. Because of this, the software is available for free to the university.

"We figured at one point that it would cost well over $1 million to use other commercial software for licensing, integrating, and support," Edmonds said.

The Sakai Project was started by the University of Michigan, Indiana University, and Stanford University, with UC Berkeley joining the project early on in its development.

The software is open source, meaning anybody can use and edit it free of charge. It is in use at more than 100 schools worldwide, including UCLA and the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Edmonds said the goal of bSpace and other online systems is to streamline the teaching process.

"The first thing the faculty wanted us to do was eliminate the drudgery (of teaching)," Edmonds said. "That right away makes the class more directed to teaching and

learning."

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