bCourses unenrolls students, instructors from UC Berkeley courses

On the morning before the start of finals week, bCourses unenrolled UC Berkeley students and instructors from 10 percent of fall 2018 courses for about four hours, according to a bCourses message.

At 10:35 a.m. Sunday, bCourses notified the campus that it had received reports from users unable to access some fall 2018 courses — some appeared to have been “unexpectedly unenrolled” from their classes. By about 1 p.m., the site projected another banner, saying that access had been restored.

According to bCourses, no data was lost in the process, and the issue appears to have been limited to bCourses itself. In its 1 p.m. message, the site said instructors would receive a follow-up message on the incident in the next day.

The bCourses site is used by campus students and instructors to share information, including assignments, grades and study material. During the last weeks of the semester, students often use the site as a way to access additional class readings, study guides, solutions to prior course work or information about final exam logistics. 

“The bCourses team is continuing to investigate the underlying cause of this failure in our daily enrollment data sync with CalCentral,” bCourses said. “However, we anticipate that there will be no further loss of access to Fall 2018 course materials.”

Sophia Brown-Heidenreich is the city news editor. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @sophiabrownh.