Today: Mar 28, 2024

New registration program to aid students’ class search

Caitlin O’HalloranReporter

Registration for the Fall 2021 semester is about to begin for students, with an increase in in-person classes.

“I’d rather have in-person classes if I could,” says nursing major Hannah Stahlbrodt, a junior, “I learn better in-person than online.”

Summer registration will begin on March 22 and Fall registration will begin on April 5.

Fall registration will begin with graduate students, followed by post-Baccalaureates and then will move on to seniors who have obtained a certain number of credits, and so on.

Students can find the number of credits they have earned on their unofficial transcript on BannerWeb before meeting with their advisors to receive their pin.

This semester, there were more in-person and hybrid courses available to students than last semester and since the beginning of the pandemic when everything was transitioned last March to an online format.

“Right now, if you look at the breakdown of what is on the schedule for fall, we are at about 70 percent on-ground and the rest are either hybrid or fully online and so that’s a little higher percentage than we would have in a pre-COVID environment, typically we would have something closer to 85 percent fully on-ground,” says Interim Vice President for Enrollment Management, Julie Edstrom.

In a recent survey on American college students done by Inside Higher Ed, data showed that more than half of those surveyed believe universities should have hybrid courses and 22 percent believed universities should allow students to return to in-person classes completely.

When it comes to registration, there have been situations in the past where it takes a while for the website to load, and students have run into issues with registering online.

The company that owns BannerWeb has been working with the university to help resolve the issue where the website may freeze while students are trying to register for their classes.

Edstrom said that was the reason they’ve switched the registration process from a by year basis, to organizing by number of credits a student has, is to have a less overwhelming number of people all trying to register at once.

“Overall, I’m pretty happy about it,” said biology major Tori Larovera, a junior. “I miss class interaction and stuff like that, I learn better in-person. Obviously, it’s a concern about COVID but I have high hopes for it.”

With 70 percent of classes being transitioned back to campus, SCSU will have to continue its plan for monitoring student’s health, to be prepared to contain cases and the plan to shut down if it needs to.

Classes for the fall semester will begin on Aug. 23 continuing to Dec. 14.

Faculty receive a free COVID-19 test and continue to social distance, wear masks, and follow other safety precautions are the key to a good semester, according to Inside Southern.

SCSU now offers a new schedule planner on Inside Southern. This planner helps students find a class schedule that works for them.

The schedule planner offers an improved registration plug in courses the student needs and reviews the schedule options, helps balance learning with life by adding customized breaks around student’s lifestyles and supports on-time graduation by maximizing credit hours, utilizing the degree plan and preloading the course schedule the student favors to prepare for scheduling.

“Things are looking positive in terms of the rate of vaccination, infection rates and so on. Obviously, we’re going to be monitoring that so as we get later in the spring and early summer, we’ll look and make sure that we continue to feel good about providing a more of an on-ground experience in the fall,” said Edstrom.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Latest from Blog