Online registration goes online

It took Marc Williams less than two minutes once he began to register for fall classes online.

"It is simple," said the 23-year-old from Maple Valley, Wash. "Provided the student knows what classes he or she is taking."

Norwich University students registered for classes online for the first time in the university's history this April, according to a Norwich official.

"Students will now register online through the Banner Web system," said Linda Yeomans, the Norwich registrar. "The old system required students to turn in a paper registration form to the Registrar's Office."

In the old system students were required to go to the Registrar's Office and turn in the registration form, Yeomans said. "We had a solid policy of no drop off of any forms."

To start the fall 2010 semester, Norwich moved to an online registration process.
Students will be able to use any computer or computer lab on campus, enter their unique personal identification number, and select their classes for the fall semester, said Yeomans.

Students will no longer have to wait in lines, run back and forth between the Registrar's Office and advisers, or worry about lost registration forms.

Some other schools have had an online system for as many as 10 or more years, according to Yeomans.

"Bellevue has been using an online system since before I started attending," said Williams, a junior computer science major at Bellevue College. "It is the only system I have known."

The Banner system was not designed originally to handle an online registration process, according to Yeomans.

A test-run of the program was done by several students in the fall of 2009. The Registrar's Office was able to find any bugs or problems in the system before it was to be used by the entire student body.

"The pilot system went smoothly without any problems," said Gaeton McVane, a 20-year-old sophomore studies in war and peace major from Roseville, Calif., and one of the student testers of the new system. "It is about time Norwich finally caught up with the [current] times."