Self-service system lacking

by Terah Primack and Anthony Newell

Registration for the spring semester opened Wednesday, Oct. 28, and students used the new self-service system for the second time this year. The goal of the new system is to give the students more control over the registration process and get all the college organizations onto one system where they can interact with each other more easily. 

WebDB was made for the college some 15 to 20 years ago and had been unable to keep up with the current changes of the college.

“It’s become a very fragile piece of equipment,” said Lyn Thomas, administrative assistant to the president and provost “and every time we go in to adjust it or make changes we get more problems than we really want to deal with, so moving community documents into a more stable system just made sense.”

Plans to switch from WebDB to Self Service have been in the works for the past four years. “The college invested a lot of its resources into Banner; we thought it was imperative that we started utilizing a number of the features to try and get us all on one system,” said Bonita Washington-Lacey, registrar and assistant dean of the college.

The goal of Self Service is to give the students more insight into the registration process.

“It really means holding students accountable, for if they made a decision online then it’s really there as opposed to ‘I put my add slip under the door’ or ‘I left it with my advisor.’ it really gives the students much more control over their involvement,” said Washington-Lacey.

Unfortunately the majority of students don’t seem to hold the new Self Service tool in a favorable light. 

“Bring back WebDB. I can’t check my GenEds as easily,” said sophomore Celine Carus.

As opposed to WebDB, it is impossible to simply search for all the classes that fulfill a certain general education requirement. Instead, you must specify which department you would like to look under. 

Even freshmen who had never used WebDB did not report positive experiences with Self Service. 

“It’s confusing and doesn’t work in my Web browser very well,” said freshman Laura Miller.

As for seniors, “We’re old and don’t like change so much,” said senior Carmina Brelsford.

The issue most often raised by students was that there was no easy way to see your schedule for an entire week. There is the ‘your week at a glance’ feature but most students found it inferior to WebDB’s handy little grid, or they had simply never found it at all.

“Finding your schedule is hard now. They should put your schedule on the same page as your classes,” said sophomore Sarah “Cake” Bapty.

“I liked it when you could see where you had a scheduling conflict because the grid would turn red,” said sophomore Ally Barnes.

Many students have expressed issues with navigating the site as well.

“It doesn’t say when labs are,” said sophomore Mackenzie Dwyer “or it lists labs as completely separate classes.”

To find out when a lab is offered, students needed to look the class up on WebDB. It is unknown, however, just how much longer WebDB will be operational. 

Another concern that was brought up was the fact that students no longer have as much need to spend time talking to their advisor. Students are questioning the use of the PIN number because though it may give the student more control over their own classes it minimizes the contact between advisor and students.

Whether the dislike of the changes made to the registration process arise from Self Service having serious issues or because students are being resistant to change is yet unclear. But most students seem to agree that Self Service still has many kinks to work out, though the old system needed help as well.