Come April 2006, students will face a computerized registration system that retains some of the more complicated - and paper-based - elements of the current system.
Computerized course registration, part of a multimillion-dollar replacement of University student services systems with an integrated database called Banner, will be implemented in April 2006, allowing students to preregister online for their Fall 2006 courses.
Though he emphasized that planning is still underway, Executive Associate Dean of the College Robert Shaw described the process students will go through when registering for courses with the new system: Students will look up courses in an online catalog similar to the Brown Online Course Announcement, take note of the codes for courses they wish to register for and then enter the codes into the system.
The system will automatically prevent students from registering if a course has already been filled to its enrollment cap or if they do not have the required prerequisites in their academic record.
After the preregistration period, the Internet-based interface will not be available again until the next semester. Students will then have access to it for the duration of shopping period, when they will be able to add and drop classes largely without paperwork.
University Registrar Michael Pesta said that since academic records will not be transferred to the new system until late 2006, automatic prerequisite checking will not be implemented immediately, but "probably in April 2007."
Enrollment limits for courses such as the popular small writing courses will probably be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
"It's probably going to take us a while to learn how to enforce things like enrollment limits," Pesta said. But he said enforcing limits on class size will be beneficial to faculty, who will have a better idea of their courses' enrollments, and also to students, who will have a better sense of which classes are still available.
Shaw emphasized that faculty will continue to have great power over their courses: They will decide the prerequisites and enrollment cap, if any, for their courses and "can override any restriction on the course" for individual students if they so choose.
Access to online registration will probably be staggered by class: Seniors will have the opportunity to register for classes first, followed by juniors, sophomores and then first-years. "One of the advantages of this is that it will allow us to give opportunities to the people who need certain courses first," such as seniors and juniors fulfilling concentration requirements, Pesta said.
And for first-years who require an advisor's permission to change courses, an "alternate PIN" provided by the advisor will be given to them to signify that permission has been granted. But first-years could get permission once and use the PIN again to change courses that semester without consulting with their advisors - a problem "we're trying to work on," Shaw said.
"Brown has such a flexible registration policy with regard to dropping and adding that it presents, in a sense, some challenges to how we would implement this," said Pesta, who emphasized that planners are trying to balance Brown's traditional flexibility with student and faculty needs.
But even with all these changes, much of the registration process will stay the same and be paper-based.
During shopping period, instructor permission is required to add a course, and Shaw said it's likely that paper permission slips will still be used for that purpose. After shopping period has ended, additional dropping and adding can only be done by paper, so that the registrar's office can charge students for filing late.
Additionally, registration spaces for classes such as VA10: "Studio Foundation" and first-year seminars will probably still be allocated by a paper-based lottery system, Pesta said.
Other schools that have implemented the Banner system have faced similar issues. Swarthmore College has online registration for the first two days of the semester but switches to paper-based registration for adding and dropping, to provide for instructor and advisor permission. Swarthmore also uses a paper-based system for courses that use enrollment lotteries.
Diane Collings, Swarthmore's associate registrar, said that keeping paper elements was necessary for the "checks and balances" of the college's system, and though it is "more tedious" that way, "being a small school, it's doable." Swarthmore has an undergraduate enrollment of 1,477 and total enrollment of 1,500, versus Brown's undergraduate enrollment of 5,797 and total enrollment of 7,819.
Shaw said the University will be able to handle both the computerized and paper-based elements of the new system, since there will be less paper than there is currently. Additionally, some work, such as inputting permission slips into the system, may be delegated out to individual departments.
Cleary Hallett '06 said she is in favor of "whatever can make the system better" but is notupset that she will miss the implementation of the new system, since she now knows how to navigate the current one.
Caroline Gray '07 said that though "I personally have not had too many problems with" the current system, "it'll be good" to have a web-based system, and she might prefer online registration if it makes shopping period less hectic.
Shaw agreed, saying that with the new system, students will face "a more orderly registration process based on clear information. What the downside will be, we'll have to find out."
