This November, students have a new venue for registering for Spring 2002 classes: the Web.
Timothy Chester, senior systems analyst for Computing and Information Services (CIS), said students will be allowed to sign up for classes on the Web and via telephone.
“This is a considerable challenge,” Chester said. “A good deal of the students are Web-savvy.
About 50 percent will have no problems registering, the other half will have to pay close attention to the instructions provided.”
In the past, phone registration has been done in phases according to classification and by last name, which were alphabetically blocked. This year, students will still register according to their classification, but they will not be sectioned based on last names.
Start dates and times will be randomly assigned to the students within each classification, Chester said. Once the start date and time begins, there will be 48 hours open for the students to register. This excludes weekends and holidays.
“Two hundred and fifty to 350 students will be allowed access to the registration system every 30 minutes,” said registrar Don Carter.
Emilie Stallings, a senior mechanical engineering major, said he worries about the new system.
“I’m a little nervous about [Web registration] simply because it’s new to me.” Stallings said. “But I’m glad there will be Web registration this year, if for no other reason than I won’t have to listen to a busy signal for two or three straight hours.”
Carter said the software has been stress-tested by CIS, with several students adding and dropping classes.
“We did performance tests with a number of students.” Chester said. “We wouldn’t turn it out if we didn’t trust it. With a small amount of students registering at one time, the chances of possible problems will be minimal.”
Email notifications for preregistration will be sent to Neo email accounts and posted on the Bonfire information system on Oct. 29.
“We want to make sure students have all the possible information they will need for registration,” Carter said.
Chester said students are encouraged to visit http://register.tamu.edu to make sure the Web-registration system will run properly with their computer.
“There are lots of help resources available,” Chester said. “There will be a help file system and a tutorial that will show students how to use the system. All student workers will be up to speed on how the system works and will be able to answer any questions.”