By
Shana Heiser
Arizona Daily Wildcat
WebReg will take over most of RSVP's load next fall
Class registration via the Internet is a reality, and 577 UA students have taken advantage of it since it's implementation Nov. 20.
The Registration System Via Phone will still be available, but online registration will probably take over by next Fall, said Brett Bendickson, Center for Computing and Information Technology's senior support systems analyst.
After this test period, the university will get an idea how of how "WebReg" is working, and they will prepare for fall registration, said Sharon Kha, UA spokeswoman.
"They launched it at the end of the registration period for spring semester because when registration opens there are thousands of phone calls an hour, and they didn't want to take a chance of trying out a new system when registration was so intense," Kha said.
Publicity about the new method of registration has been kept to a minimum, but the word is being passed around and 1,708 students have viewed the Web site since Nov. 20.
"There was very little fanfare or announcement about it, but within 11 minutes of it going online students had begun to use it," Kha said.
The ease of registering on the Internet should attract many UA students, Kha said.
"The registrar's office believes it will be the friendliest way because you just point and click," she said. "On RSVP, you have to have access numbers."
Behind the scenes, Bendickson said "screen-scraping" technology was being used, which took the place of a human or a telephone system.
"There's a piece of software there that is performing the actions a human would if they were to logged into Student Information Systems," Bendickson said.
Before launching WebReg, the system underwent extensive testing, Bendickson said. About six student volunteers went through the initial registration process, than 150 testers volunteered to work out the kinks in the final stages, he said.
"During the usability testing, we were able to reorganize things and put things in different spots on the screen so people would notice things more," Bendickson said. "There were some issues with cross listing of courses and some confusion over this."
A significant difference between RSVP and Web-based registration is that students cannot pay their bill online, Kha said.
"They should have that up and running by the end of the spring semester," she said. "It will be much like the way you use your credit card in any Web transaction."
In addition to registering for classes online, students can access new features on Student Link, Bendickson said.
"Very recently, we've added marked up SAPRs (Student Academic Progress Report) as well as what-if SAPRs, both tools we expect to be useful tools during registration," Bendickson said.
