With the end of the semester quickly approaching I once again had to deal with the grueling process of scheduling classes. Besides the fact that advisor holds need to be removed before classes can even be scheduled, which in itself causes many problems, the entire online scheduling process can be tedious and confusing. Although, this is about my 6th or 7th time of scheduling classes the process and layout of the site changes almost every time I attempt to schedule. Everything is in different places than it previously had been and there is almost no direction of how to go about the process. While scheduling classes last week I experienced two main problems. First of all after typing in the course abbreviation and number I was given a list of open classes. When I clicked on the last that I wanted to enroll in I was asked to select whether or not I intended on being a full time student, but there was no where to select this option for that class. I had to select another class and then the option was displayed, so I ended up with a class time that I wasn't happy with. The second problem I experienced was the fact that when searching for open classes I was given a list but when trying to add the class that I wanted a message was displayed that said the open spots in the class had already been reserved. The shouldn't have listed the class as open if there was no possibility of being accepted into the class.
These are just two of the main problems that I have experienced with the West Chester scheduling process, there are many others that I have also came across while scheduling, such as the five or more steps you have to go through to make sure a class has been added to your actual schedule instead of to only your tentative class list.
I feel that because West Chester uses an online system for scheduling classes they should make sure that this system is as easily as possible to use for students. This is because of the fact that so many problems arise from their scheduling process.
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Angela, Your point about it taking you five steps to perform what should be a simple process is what happens when developers, not users, are prioritized in building a computer/database/application. I have heard similar complaints from other students. It would actually be interesting to complete a usability test on the system and send the results to the company. Hmmm...maybe we'll do this in my ENG 371 class next semester.
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