E-Registration Stymies Some

While Allison C. Smith ’08 said she was able to register painlessly through the online registration system at her leisure, she found the new online study card system made this fall’s shopping period significantly more stressful than last year’s.

After obtaining the three signatures required for her study card, she decided not to take one of the courses she had previously planned to­—and therefore had to collect all three again for her revised study card.

“The whole purpose of shopping period is to allow you to look around and change your mind, and the new study card system is incompatible with that,” she said.

The College’s most recent move to cyberspace met with both praise and criticism from students, the former regarding the registration process and the latter primarily regarding the study card system.

“The response we have received during the roll-out of these applications has been overwhelmingly positive,” wrote Registrar of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Barry S. Kane in an e-mail. “Students understand that these kinds of initiatives are long overdue and that we are moving in the right direction.”

Students lauded the online system’s convenience.

“It saved me a lot of legwork and confusion,” Amadi P. Anene ’08 said of the online registration process. “It took me all of two minutes.”

“It was user-friendly,” Tracy “Ty” Moore II ’06 said of the online study card system.

Students like Smith, however, disliked the new online study card system, which can sometimes require students to obtain two or even three signatures from the same instructor if they make changes to their printed card.

The study card collectors refused to accept more than one card from each student.

“I would prefer the old way,” Elaine F. Besancon ’08 said. “It was much less of a headache for us and our professors, who now have to sign multiple cards every time you change a course.”

Some students found flaws in the system for different reasons: “I didn’t have a computer, so the online study card was a huge pain,” Ryan B. Darnell ’08 said.

Despite complaints, Kane said 98 percent of all students submitted their study cards on time, with the appropriate signatures.

He added that 40 percent of all students were able to pass in a study card without a single instructor’s signature, and that of those study cards that required faculty signatures, 80 percent needed only one. In addition, approximately 54 percent of all students whose study cards required faculty signatures printed only one card.

In years past, students had to fill in bubbles on a paper study card, collect required signatures from faculty members and advisers, and then turn the card in to the Registrar’s Office at the end of shopping period.

“Last year I filled in wrong bubbles and was registered for a class I didn’t mean to take,” Kathryn G. Lawrence ’08 said.

“The new online application does eliminate the inadvertent selection of an incorrect course on the part of the students,” Kane wrote in an e-mail. “The Registrar’s Office was able to process all of the enrollment data this term without a single processing error.”

Some students said they feared the online study card system might eliminate the shopping period.

But Kane said there is no danger of that.

“The new applications were not designed to threaten or eliminate the shopping period,” Kane wrote. “Indeed, they were developed to enhance the process. From what I’ve seen at Harvard thus far, preregistration is not a option.”

Kane said the Registrar’s Office will make decisions in the next few weeks regarding additional initiatives it could focus on in the coming year.

“Faculty have been asking for electronic submission of grades, students have been asking for electronic submission of transcript requests, and there are also the enhancements that will need to be made to online registration and course enrollment,” Kane wrote. “Not everything can be accomplished at once, but we will make steady progress toward moving these processes online.”