Cathy Koshland, UC Berkeley vice chancellor for undergraduate education, sent this message to the campus community today:

Dear Campus Community,

I wanted to share with you the decision to restrict access to our legacy Course Capture (classroom lecture) videos and podcasts, currently searchable at webcast.berkeley.edu and found on YouTube and UC Berkeley iTunesU, to members of the campus community.

As part of the campus’s ongoing effort to improve the accessibility of online content, we have determined that instead of focusing on legacy content that is 3-10 years old, much of which sees very limited use, we will work to create new public content that includes accessible features. Our public legacy libraries on YouTube and iTunesU include over 20,000 publications. This move will also partially address recent findings by the Department of Justice which suggests that the YouTube and iTunesU content meet higher accessibility standards as a condition of remaining publicly available. Finally, moving our content behind authentication allows us to better protect instructor intellectual property from “pirates” who have reused content for personal profit without consent.

Since fall 2015 we have piloted publishing all of our Course Capture content behind CAS/CalNet authentication. This strategy has enhanced our ability to accommodate students and UC Berkeley community members who have demonstrated an accessibility need, and we have concluded that authentication is an intervention that is appropriately responsive to the Berkeley community.

We will continue to evaluate the role of online Course Capture and distribution in tandem with advances in technology befitting the No. 1 public institution in the country. Berkeley will maintain its commitment to sharing content to the public through our partnership with EdX (edx.org). This free and accessible content includes a wide range of educational opportunities and topics from across higher ed.

Beginning March 15, 2017, access to iTunesU course content will be suspended. On the same day we will begin the process of moving the publicly offered YouTube content made from the current legacy channel [youtube.com/ucberkeley] to a new authentication login required channel. The entire process is expected to take three to five months. During this time the ETS team will migrate the videos into the new channel behind CalNet/CAS authentication. Berkeley users seeking to view this older content will be able to access it by logging into YouTube with their bConnected/Google-supported identity.

To help manage the instructional impact, instructors with legacy content have been contacted. Instructors utilizing the ETS Course Capture service since fall 2015 will experience no changes in viewing or accessing content.

Enrolled Berkeley students requiring accommodations will continue to receive support through the Disabled Students Program.

Finally, as we continue to strive for inclusion and effective teaching and learning for all members of the campus community, we encourage you to reference a new campus website designed to help instructors identify best practices and techniques in creating accessible course content for all users: accesscontent.berkeley.edu.

For additional information, please review this FAQ document.