The excitement is palpable as first years and senior students alike walk towards Callie Human Hall to register. Imagine their dismay when they reach their goal only to find a queue that stretches around the perimeter of the entire building. And upon entering the building, they find out that they have no legitimate reason to register at the Callie Human, but should instead register at the computer lab by using the online registration option. This is a situation that a lot of the students found themselves in during the past few weeks of registration.
Due to the arrival of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Kovsies has tried to make registering easier for the students by setting up an internet based registration programme. “The system was bought five years ago,” says Haumann Joubert, Assistant Director: Student Academic Services. Due to the fact that the software was originally American they had “to make a lot of conversions to the system” so that it would suit the University’s needs.
However, the switch to online registration was not without its problems. Many students were unable to register or could only register after being sent from pillar to post. Phil de Lange, a third year BA Marketing Communication student, was unable to register as he could not find his subject codes online. He commented that the assistants “seemed like they got a crash course in training” and were not able to assist him.
Lack of knowledge was not the only reason why students did not, or were not, able to register online. Joubert mentioned that there were “a lot of business rules that block the registration process”. Many students had insufficient funds and the system therefore denied them any further progress. Another block was the regulation which states that students who have failed a module twice are unable to register for that course again unless they have a letter from the dean of their faculty.
First years were also unable to register on the internet “because the 2010 curriculum was not loaded,” Joubert explained. While they are trying to find a solution to this problem, it will be some time before it will be solved. Finally, students who have been at the university for more than five years are blocked because their modules are too ‘old’ for the new process.
According to Joubert there were “2 700 students who used the systems without problems.” Lefa Mochelanyana, a second year LL.B student, found no problems when registering and considered the assistants “very friendly”. She said that “everything was completely understandable.”
Despite the new online system there were still many students who registered manually. One of the students, Anna*, a third year BA Media Studies, arrived at the Callie Human Hall at 10am and only managed to register six and a half hours later. “I’m under the impression that they didn’t expect so many people to come to registration, especially manual registration,” Anna opined.
Another factor that slowed down the registration process was the power shortage on Tuesday. The university is trying to upgrade the Callie Human Hall and while trying to do so they changed the wattage from 30 watts to 20 watts, but failed to alert the registration officials of this fact. Consequently there were too many computers in the hall, which then caused a system overload resulting in the system crashing. Joubert declared that any problems experienced were “not due to insufficient planning, but unexpected occurrences” and the fact that students did not read the manual written specifically to help with the internet registration. Registration has now been extended to Friday 5 February.
By Christina Hall |