BearFacts: An online system that provides information regarding student registration, grades, financial aid, billing, class schedule, and more.

Blackboard: A software company that markets a course management system.

Cal PACT: Cal People and Computer Training

Caltopia: A welcome festival held in August and open to students, faculty, staff, and community.

CAP: College Admissions Project

Capstone: The culmination of a student's academic experiences.

CARS: UCB Campus Accounts Receivable System

Copyright: A set of specific rights to content use, manipulation, and distribution that the law grants content creators, leaving all other rights to the public.

Course Management System (CMS): A software tool that manages content and communication to support teaching and learning. Course Management Systems typically provide faculty with tools to post announcements, syllabi, and assignments; provide readings; and facilitate communication; and online grade book.

DARS: UCB Degree Audit Reporting System

Data Encryption System: A secure way to send secure encoded transmissions of data from one party to another.

Data Warehouse: A very large database designed for fast processing of queries, projections, and data summaries, normally used by a large organization.

Dynamic: Performed while a program is running.

e-Grades: Faculty, using a secure site, can enter grades on the web, or designate a staff member to do so.

ePortfolio: A highly personalized, customizable web-based information management system, which allows students to demonstrate individual and collaborative growth, achievement and learning over time. An ePortfolio can be used in support of career planning and resume building, advising and academic planning, academic evaluation and assessment, and as a tool for reflection.

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language. The language used to create World Wide Web pages, with hyperlinks and markup for text formatting.

Information Management Processor: This is a system (a program, living on a server) that retrieves, sorts, and delivers information.

In-service: Refers to teachers who are actively in the teaching role. As opposed to "pre-service", which general refers to undergraduates intending to teach.

Learning Management System (LMS): A centralized repository of online courses that has built-in tools for developing, administering, and publishing your course website.

Learning Outcomes: Goals that learners are expected to achieve when they have completed a specified course of instruction. It prescribes the conditions, behavior (action), and standard of task performance.

Load Balancer: Will divide the amount of work that a computer has to do between two or more computers so that more work gets done in the same amount of time and, in general, all users get served faster. Load balancing can be implemented with hardware, software, or a combination of both.

Multimedia: May include text, spoken audio, music, images, animation and video.

MyBerkeleyApp: An online system that allows update of pre-admission required forms for new students.

OCF: Open Computing Facility

OLADS: Online Add/Drop System for courses. Not available for direct student use.

Open Source: Noncommercial software projects developed by a community of programmers for the good of the community. Linux, a powerful, widely adopted operating system, is the most prominent example of open source software. OSPI is an open source electronic portfolio project.

Portability: Ease of transfer from one system to another; ease of use with a variety of platforms without modification.

Portal: A Web site that integrates several services into a common interface. A student web portal allows students to customize and access online campus services, websites, and course information from one convenient location, using a single user ID and password.

SAN: Storage Area Network. A network whose primary purpose is the transfer of data between computer systems and storage elements and among storage elements. A SAN consists of a communication infrastructure, which provides physical connections, and a management layer, which organizes the connections, storage elements, and computer systems so that data transfer is secure and robust.

Skills matrix: A proposed feature of an e-portfolio that helps student map their development trajectory at the university and beyond. Students chronicle skills and experiences attained through coursework, employment, and other activities.

Student Information System: The application that manages student information from admissions through registration to alumni. Examples include SCT/Banner, Datatel, and PeopleSoft.

Tele-BEARS: an interactive computer system that allows students to enroll in classes via the Internet.

Trajectory: Referring to the series of successive states (i.e. the path) through which a student progresses over time.

UCLink: E-mail system for UC Berkeley

User Interface: The means by which a user interacts with a computer. Includes the computer screen and what appears on it; the way commands are given, etc. With a command-line interface, only text appears on the screen, and the user must type in commands; with a graphical user interface, windows, mice, menus, and icons are used to communicate with the computer.

WebCT: A brand of course management system.

World Wide Web: This is the Internet's browse, search, and retrieve system that provides for a hypermedia/hypertext- based Internet information system. Computer users connect to the Web by using a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Developmental portfolio: A teacher who is interested in documenting a student's improvements in writing or mathematics throughout a school year can have the student keep a developmental portfolio containing samples of the student's work along with self-evaluations of specific assignments. Such a portfolio provides specific documentation which can be used for student evaluations and parent conferences.

Teacher planning: Teachers may use an existing portfolio system in order to receive information about an incoming class of students. The teacher may gain a better understanding of the ability levels of his or her students prior to the start of the school year and plan accordingly.

Proficiency portfolio: Central Park East Secondary School in New York City uses portfolios as a means for determining graduation eligibility. Students at this school are required to complete fourteen portfolios which demonstrate their competence and performance in areas such as science and technology, ethics and social issues, community service, and history (Gold & Lanzoni, 1993).

Showcase portfolio: A showcase portfolio can document a student's best work accomplished during an entire educational career. It can include the research papers, art work, and science experiments which best represent the student's skills and abilities.

Employment skills portfolio: Businesses across the country are increasingly interested in viewing student portfolios in order to evaluate a prospective employee's work readiness skills. Students in the Michigan public schools, for example, are creating employability skills portfolios to demonstrate their skills to prospective employers (Stemmer, Brown, & Smith, 1992).

College admission portfolio: Colleges and universities are using showcase portfolios to determine eligibility for admission. By requiring portfolios from prospective students, college or university admissions officers are better able to assess applicants' potential for success at their institutions.