LIS sees smoother registration process

Author: Zamir Ahmed

Student course registration for the spring semester has been running smoothly on Banner Web, according to Library and Information Service (LIS) staff members, after a slow server and performance issues frustrated students in previous years.

"In terms of how registration has gone this year, from our perspective it's gone pretty well," said Area Director of Resource Development and Services Carrie Rampp. "It was a little slower the first couple of days but I think since then it's been running pretty well."

Course registration has been conducted using Banner Web since the spring of 2003. Administrators acknowledged that the three-and-a-half-year learning curve is in part responsible for this year's smoother process.

"I'd say that that plays a significant part in it, knowing how the system works and having worked with it for a number of years," said Chris Norris, manager of database applications and systems, when asked about the reason for the improvement in the registration process. "Some of the tuning on the backend, we've become fairly adept at that so if a potential problem starts to creep up, we have sort of a tool box of tools that we could use to figure out what's really going on and we can adjust if necessary. We haven't really had to do that this registration period. Things have been going very smoothly."

Course registration did undergo a change in process this term as the Registrar's Office added more days to registration in order to create days for Febs to register separately from the regular admissions class. In the past, Febs and "Regs" of the same class year registered at the same time.

The College's use of Banner Web is continuing to expand, as departments and offices approach LIS with interest in using the software to assist in their administrative work. This year, LIS is aiming to have room draw be administered completely online using Banner Web after only block draw was run through the software last year.

"From the Dean of Student Affairs' perspective, it went extremely well last year," said Norris. "Students seemed to get housing choices, their preferences that they were looking for based on points, rankings and other things. This year, we're looking at doing the singles and doubles online … and we anticipate it will go as smoothly, if not more smoothly, than last year."

"Long ago there were always dreams of having online room draw," said Rampp. "A lot of schools have done it for a long time and for quite a while we thought it might not be possible because there were so many rules."

Online room draw will allow students to enter into Banner Web their request for rooms by a certain deadline before the process is run, thereby eliminating the importance of the time that students select rooms during live draw.

"Hopefully that will take away some of the stress," said Rampp.

Banner Web serves a number of functions for the College, assisting in the administration of students, faculty and staff. Students use the software most common for applications such as the tracking of student employment hours, student financial accounts and course registration. Banner Web is also utilized by the admissions office to track applicant characteristics, such as athletic recruiting interest, and is used to process or administer online applications and financial aid applications.

While the College does use most of the mechanisms installed in the software by Banner Web's vendor, Sungard, LIS has added its own components to meet administrative needs, such as storing student mailbox combinations and the new online room draw process. However, not all of the programs offered by the software are utilized by the College. While tests have been made of the course evaluation module of Banner Web using the Language Schools, no plans are in place to utilize the tool for undergraduates.

While much of what Banner Web does is not seen by students, the software plays a large role in supporting the critical functions of the College, which continues to grow as new components are added as is needed by the administration and students.