As I sat preparing for upcoming essays and midterms in the middle of March, I was hit with the all too familiar email from IRIS and my advisor: “Are you ready for class registration?” To which, the answer is always a resounding, “No.”
The registration process, which typically starts up right around midterms, is often a stressful time for Colorado Mesa University (CMU) students. We are cramming for exams and putting in hours on essays, and suddenly we need to start worrying about checking our degree requirements and creating plans for the next semester.
Even when you prepare in advance, you often find on registration day that something will go amiss. After checking through the courses being offered and comparing them to my DegreeWorks, I always inevitably find that a class will be full, there is a time conflict or I misread a course number.
And this problem is not one that I face alone; as class registration rolls around in the middle of the semester, I can consistently count on the fact that every student I speak to is under the same stress from registration.
These anxieties are, of course, only made worse when you enter the registration application. When registering, I often need a DegreeWorks tab open, a tab for course descriptions and the registration application.
I spend substantial amounts of time navigating back and forth between these tabs, debating what classes to take and seeing what is being offered that would work toward my degree.
That’s without coupling all of this with the fact that many classes have pre-requisites, that there are extremely limited classes offered each semester and that we are racing against other students to fill limited seats.
Though, CMU is attempting to help students through some of these anxieties and stressors. IRIS and our advisors are often an email away to answer any questions we may have, and CMU is releasing an allegedly more intuitive and helpful schedule builder that will replace the older application in the fall.
This being said, there are still several features that this new schedule builder is missing. Knowing what I face during registration, and what peers go through as well, CMU needs a registration application that is centered around being intuitive and easy to use for all students.
Ideally, a registration application would be able to help students find the courses that they need to fulfill their graduation requirements, whether that means our information is pulled from DegreeWorks or we are given an option to better filter classes.
This new app makes important strides in helping students build ideal schedules that fit their personal needs and degree requirements; however, students are still left wanting more to help to ease the stress that an often-untimely registration brings with it.
