College Braces for Real-Time Registration

Author: Andrea Gissing

The time students have eagerly been awaiting, or dreading, is at hand: "Real-Time Registration" on BannerWeb. Course registration for Winter Term started at 7 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5 and will be open until 7 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 8. Spring term registration begins Monday, Nov. 17 at 7 a.m., and will close Saturday, Nov. 22.

BannerWeb, which was first introduced to the College for employees in January 2002, replaces the MARS system of registration. "When the College selected Banner as its system for managing campus data and records, one of the primary objectives was to get the entire campus using just one system, rather than various systems in different areas that couldn't always talk to each other," said Kathy Weiss, registrar and assistant dean of enrollment.

The new system offers several advantages for both students and faculty over MARS. In Banner, students are now able to see their transcript and grade point average, check to see if an instructor has granted a course approval or issued a registration override and see a visual image of their daily schedule. Faculty can see their class lists, view students on waiting lists for their courses, issue overrides to students and view their teaching schedule. "The biggest benefit for students," said Weiss, "is knowing immediately if they have gotten into the courses they want or need."

Computer consultants at Information Technology Services (ITS) have already fielded many questions and complaints, with the majority of problems pertaining to login procedures. "A lot of people are getting locked out of the system," said Adelina Voutchkova '04. There is a five time limit for entering ones' PIN number and if people do not know what to enter, the system will deny the student access after a point. Also, problems arise if students enter their identification (ID) number incorrectly. For students with a six digit ID number they have to enter two zeros first so as to provide the eight-digit number that the system requires. Christopher Loeffler '04 said this was because "The College wants every student who ever attended Middlebury to have a distinct ID number. The next entering class will have an eight-digit identification number."

Both Voutchkova and Loeffler agree that many of the problems they have addressed could be solved if students read the instructions more carefully, as the login page describes the correct procedure. "In the future [BannerWeb] will be a program that will be much easier to use," said Loeffler. "Now, however, we're in a transition period that we have to weather."

Extra services will be provided during the registration period however. "ITS will be open 24 hours," said Voutchkova. "We'll offer extra assistance, especially help for freshmen and we'll be able to reset passwords for locked out students, which has been the most common problem to date," she added.

Student opinion of the new registration procedure since the practice round became available for use Oct. 28 has ranged from distaste of having to switch systems to interest in trying the new system. Tina Dimitrova '05, who used the practice round and found that she liked many of the features, said it was, "Convenient, because it instantly told me what conflicts there are in my schedule." Many, however, are waiting to reserve judgment until after the first round. "We'll have to wait and see if there is a problem," said Hoa Tran '05.

Students are also wary of the "real-time" aspect of registration, expressing concern that an excessive volume of people trying to access the system at once will undoubtedly cause problems. "BannerWeb has its own server," said Loeffler, "so we hope crashes will not be an issue. The system is designed so that if there are a lot of people using Tigercat, BannerWeb will not be affected." According to Tom Cutter, director of system and network services, the few network connectivity problems that have occurred this year, such as the ones caused by viruses and worms, affected external services, but the internal connectivity has not been affected. Additionally, ITS installed a back-up generator in September to prevent a system failure in the event of prolonged power outages during the registration period.

"Having lots of students and faculty participate in the practice round really helped identify issues, such as some data that needed to be changed or processes that needed to be tweaked," said Weiss.

"[The] overall reaction [to BannerWeb] is quite favorable," concluded Weiss. "As with most significant changes, the new system was viewed with trepidation. But we have heard from faculty and students alike that once they get into the system and use it they find it easier to use than they anticipated."