Aurora Is Open For Business

New registration system expected to have more tools, better student understanding, next year

CHRISTINE LEONG

The new Aurora registration system is finally here and most students have now used it to register for the 2006-07 school year. This new method of registration, according to registrar Neil Marnoch, is expected to increase convenience and accessibility. However, many of the new features have not yet come into effect and the new design has so far been receiving mixed reviews from students.

Many returning students encountered problems they were not accustomed to. For instance, changes in the way courses are labelled made choosing courses very different. However, the key difficulties involved registering for courses that were once six credit hours and recognizing error messages that pop up unexpectedly.

“When it comes to registering for courses, part A and part B have to be registered,” said Marnoch when discussing full-length courses that have been split into two sections. “Registering for those types of courses is probably the biggest problem we’ve had.”

As for courses that include a lab, a common error message that arises is “link error,” which is also causing a lot of confusion for students.

“A ‘link error’ means that two courses are linked, a lecture and a lab,” Marnoch explained. Marnoch noted this error appears with a lecture section when a lab section has a timetable conflict.

One student also criticized the layout of the design claiming that it was more irksome than helpful.

“Earlier we had all the root menus on the left of the screen and so it was easy to navigate to any page that we wanted to go to. However, in Aurora there is no such menuing system,” said Saif Huq, a fourth-year electrical engineering student.

Many of the system’s new features will come into effect soon, according to Marnoch. Tools such as the “degree audit” — which will notify students of required courses pertaining to the selected degree — were originally scheduled to be available concurrently with the registration period this year. These tools are to be implemented on a faculty- by-faculty basis over a two- or three-year period. Marnoch has pointed out that the priority will be based on the number of students and degree options available within a faculty.

“We’re quite behind on where we thought we would be in terms of making that available,” said Marnoch. “We probably won’t be making it available until next spring.”

Education-policy oriented changes have come into effect already — making university rules at an institutional level rather than at a faculty level. These changes include removing the limit on voluntary withdrawals, accepting the most recent GPA achieved for a repeated course, and allowing a course to be repeated only once. Marnoch said that this would benefit students in the long run, as it will force them to be “more serious about their studies the second time around.”

It has been four years since the University of Manitoba made online registration an alternative to phone registration. Now, with Aurora in place, online registration is the only means of registration. The cost of this service was previously quoted by Marnoch to be around $7-8 million, which is a long-term investment and includes annual maintenance fees.

“So we’ll be able to keep this system more up-to-date then the old system was,” said Marnoch.

Fourth-year genetics student Sara Weselake said that Aurora is not complicated to learn.

“It was simple to use once you figured things out,” she said. “Probably the most confusing part was the change in course numbers but next year I will have no problem with it . . . I hope!”

To help students navigate the Aurora system, “askumanitoba” has been implemented. Marnoch explained that “You can just type in a question and get an automated response.”

The registrar said that this link is a valuable alternative to the phone registration system, noting that students have complained of waiting up to an hour on the phone for an available staff member.

“About two weeks into registration we had about 16,000 questions and 90 per cent of those questions got an automated response,” said Marnoch.