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Analysis and Commentary on the Online Summer Schedule:
Pro: Digital schedule more efficient
There’s no point in denying it anymore: We live in a digital age. Five-year -olds have the capability to surf the Internet while their 60-year-old grandparents are running around with digital cameras. Technology thrives because it makes our lives easier and, as college students, that idea should still hold true.
This summer, Mt. Hood Community College is featuring almost all of its course schedule online. Instead of hunting around for a paper catalog, students will be able to find everything they need on the MHCC website. “Registration Kiosks” are popping up everywhere to help students register online. While some may see this as the death of print, the dawning of the new age of registration, technological advances taking over, I see it for what it really is: a stroke of genius.
As web editor of The Advocate, it is easy for me to see why the kiosks and online scheduling is beyond practical for the college. However, for those in the dark, let me elaborate.
It is beyond easy to fix errors on the web. All it takes is a simple edit on the page in your application and uploading it to the main server. While this may sound like technological mumbo-jumbo, it’s simpler than that. It’s a fact of life that the college gives courses and the college takes them away. Teachers are unavailable, students don’t sign up. Suddenly course sections can disappear before our eyes. With course schedules printed out in the thousands, it’s hard to take back what is imprinted in ink. This was seen with the tuition misprint of Winter 2009, a misprint that led students to believe that miraculously college would be cheaper that term.
As a student, I’m busy enough without trying to register for courses that are no longer available to me. I don’t want to waste my time in registration trying to figure out if SP11 will be offered S and what section of Math 60 I can take.
Conversely, I don’t want to waste the time of college employees either.
Speaking of which, time is money. And in this economy, money isn’t something the college can afford to spare. As the economic crisis threatens the budget, I would rather take the time to go online, knowing the college isn’t spending its funds on a packet of paper. This packet, mind you, gets ink on our hands, has paper that slices into our fingers and fragility that means it cannot withstand being buried in the bottom of our backpacks.
Instead, this money can be better spent promoting summer classes, providing more class options for students enrolled in the summer term, paying teachers to provide more sections not just in the summer but in the future.
Because really, this is what it comes down to, a step in the future for Mt. Hood Community College, its faculty, its staff and ultimately its students. Why waste time flipping through a catalog full of potentially inaccurate information? Why brave paper cuts and torn-out pages just to fill out paperwork while standing in Student Services all afternoon? Why plan your summer schedule on paper just to register online anyway?
Instead, students must embrace the infinite possibilities of online scheduling and abandon once and for all the archaic paper schedules that once ruled our lives.
We turn to the Internet so much now anyway, with networking, e-mails and so much more. Why not take the leap into this final frontier and take the obvious next step, which is simply this: Be online.
Con: Digital schedule gives fewer options
Christina Hammett
The Advocate
As college students, it can be difficult just to pay rent, electricity and water bills.
Not all of us can afford to own computers, let alone pay for Internet each month.
As a student, I have always used the registration schedule to choose my classes prior to signing up for them, but now, as the campus moves toward solely using computers for registration purposes, the schedules are becoming less and less useful.
The new schedule for summer quarter is ridiculous and miniscule — it doesn't even include all of the sections available for each course. It may look better as far as graphic and font usage is concerned, but it is hardly useful for a current MHCC student. At this point, students are pretty much being forced to go online to register.
It all began with elimination of touch-tone telephone registration earlier this year. Granted, I never used the touch-tone system and needless to say was not melancholic over its departure, but I have always been fond of the paper schedules.
I have always been the type of person who enjoys highlighting which classes I wish to take and then writing them out on paper until I have a feasible class schedule made. Without a proper printed version of the schedule, those like me can no longer do that.
As part of the computer generation, I can understand why registration would move to an online version. I know that it would save the school some money and make things more efficient by being able to update classes and sessions that have been cancelled, but it does not give students many options.
What may be a better fix is to print fewer schedules to save money, and also offer the web version. It would allow all students to use whatever form of registration works best for them.
In the age of electronics, sometimes it seems that things are better left in paper form, at least maybe for old times’ sake.
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