Office of the Registrar Student Advisory Board, 12/3/10

The Office of the Registrar Student Advisory Board met last Friday, December 3rd. The meeting began with a brief discussion which reviewed the implementation of the new wait list feature during Spring course enrollment. There was a general consensus that while there was some confusion among students regarding the new feature, that it was generally viewed as an improvement over the previous system.

The Registrar’s Office then provided the Board with a review of their plan to upgrade course guide through the integration of Instructor Provided Content.

Instructor-Provided Content

This would address the issue that may students have with the current course guide, which often features very brief, vague course descriptions, which may very well be inaccurate or out of date.

Instead, the course guide would feature a course description which was actually written by the professor, to provide a more accurate description of course subjects.

The faculty would also provide a set of keywords to describe the course, making it simpler for students to search for courses.

The Student Board also discussed some other potential information to make available:

• Textbook requirements
• Specific “skills” which the course would develop
• If possible, a course syllabus

The Registrar’s Office informed us that some of this information was already available, through the small icons which appear in course guide. (e.g. the small textbook icon, ect…)

Many members of the student board agreed that these icons were easily ignored, and many students may not use them. We agreed that there should be an effort to make existing information and any expansion to course guide easily available and clearly integrated, without creating clutter.

Search Functionality

Additionally, there are plans to improve the current search functionality of course guide, in order to make the system less specific and more user-friendly. Specific measures to improve this would include the ability to search in English words, rather than just abbreviations, and the use of keywords to describe classes.

Course Planner Improvements

There is also a plan underway to integrate DARS and specific course lists with the planner function in course guide. This would make it possible for students to see which courses will be required for a specific major, and to plan accordingly, without having to cross-reference course guide with a separate course list or DARS printout.

This led to a discussion of the already-existing planner function. While it was implemented at the beginning of the semester, there was agreement that the function is largely unknown, and that there is a need to advertise its utility to the student body. There was discussion of working with SOAR or DOIT to teach students about course guide and student center features during each group’s respective, mandatory session for incoming freshmen.

Course Guide Accessibility

Finally, there was a brief talk about some of the archaic symbols and abbreviations currently used in course descriptions, and how, with improvements in technology, it is now possible to use full words, rather than abbreviations and symbols, to provide information on courses and prerequisites.

The honors system was held up as an example of something which is needlessly complicated, as the various symbols used to describe honors courses can easily be replaced by full words and specific search options.

It was agreed that there needs to be cooperation from the Advisors on campus in order to make course guide more accessible to students.

This was the last meeting of the Advisory Board until next semester. If you have any input on our discussion from last week, about your experience with course enrollment for spring, or any other thoughts in general, please comment below.

-Ian Gorecki