Columbia College Student Council is working with administrators to make it easier to register for classes, schedule exams, and get end-of-semester grades on time.
CCSC’s point person for the several ongoing initiatives is Academic Affairs Representative Bruno Rigonatti Mendes, CC ’14 and Spectator finance associate, who is partnering with Columbia University Information Technology and several administrators to create an online wait-list program for class registration. His other projects include making textbook information and syllabi available online, enforcing professors’ final grade deadlines, and making quantitative course evaluations publicly available.
Mendes said he is focused on issues that have been addressed in the past but have required follow-up.
“I feel like we’re assigned the responsibility of dealing with the issues that seem to worry the students the most,” Mendes said. “So I’ve tried to do that.”
Online wait-list
According to Columbia College Dean of Academic Affairs Kathryn Yatrakis, students and professors have wanted to see online wait-lists for years, but logistical and technological obstacles have gotten in the way.
“For years, we have been told that it would not be possible to configure the system so as to accommodate a wait-list,” Yatrakis said in an email. “Our new University Registrar, Barry Kane, now has told us [he] thinks that there may indeed be a way for us to think about a wait-list and we will be continuing discussions with him about this.”
According to Kane, who was hired earlier this year, the Student Information System—the computing system that manages most students’ and offices’ data—cannot support a wait-list. Under the current system, Mendes noted, even the most determined students sometimes don’t get into the classes they want, making an online wait-list all the more necessary.
“If you’re persistent about it, you’re able to get it most of the time but not all of the time, so that’s the problem we’re trying to fix,” he said. “But a lot of people like this incentive-based system that we have currently, even though it means clicking the refresh page button on SSOL for one hour if you need to.”
Mendes added that several details would have to be worked out before a full wait-list system could be implemented, including whether to factor class seniority into the wait-list, how many wait-lists a student could sign up for, and which classes would get wait-lists.
Eddie Martinez, CC ’14, said wait-lists would give students a clearer picture of what classes they would actually get into.
“You probably could have a lot more realistic expectations that way,” Martinez said.
Tom Kapusta, CC ’12, said he has not had problems with the current system. If you show up to a class on the first day, he said, professors are “more than willing” to make accommodations.
“I’ve never been turned away from a class,” Kapusta said. “Twice this has happened and I’ve been added to the class. Once was a seminar.”
Syllabus information
Mendes would also like professors to put textbook and syllabus information online before registration begins, an idea that the new CourseWorks website might make possible.
Students have long argued that this information would make them more equipped to select courses. Yatrakis called it a compelling argument, saying in an email that the new site will be able to show “those parts of the syllabus which identify course requirements available to students.”
The transition to the new CourseWorks is scheduled to be completed by spring 2013, according to Maneesha Aggarwal, the manager of CUIT Teaching and Learning Technologies. However, the process is moving ahead of schedule—although 800 courses had been scheduled to move from old to new CourseWorks for this semester, 1,200 courses made the transition.
“It’s a huge project and it’s really cool,” Mendes said. “It’s a completely new system.”
Aggarwal said that instructors have the ability to upload syllabus and textbook information directly to either old or new CourseWorks. Still, Yatrakis said that even with the new CourseWorks, each faculty member can still choose how much information to upload.
“In some cases faculty might make the entire syllabus available,” Yatrakis said in an email. “For some faculty, this would not be a problem. Other faculty, however, consider their syllabus to be their intellectual property so they will just make their introduction and course requirements, available to students. “
Final grade deadline
Another initiative is a push to make it easier for professors to submit final grades on time, by enabling them to use the Administrative Referral grade—a temporary grade that was approved for use in 2005 and will now be implemented next semester. Professors can issue the AR grade in cases where a student fails to complete all required course materials and the professor cannot reach him or her to find out why.
The AR grade functions as a placeholder, giving the professor time to notify the student’s adviser to figure out the student’s situation. Since professors must submit all final grades for a course at the same time, a professor can give a student an AR grade temporarily to avoid delaying the rest of the students’ grades.
“We’re solving two problems with the AR grade: We’re solving the problem of other students not getting their grades, and we’re also giving the student who’s not been going to class or handing in material the opportunity to be judged in a fair way,” Mendes said.
According to Mendes, academic deans will make sure professors follow the final grade deadline. Professors don’t receive sanctions for not turning in grades on time, but late graders will now be notified by the appropriate dean, Mendes said.
“Once the deadline passes, they will find out who has not submitted their grades yet, and they will get in touch with those people,” Mendes added. “That is the best incentive we can give to professors to submit the grades: to be notified by the dean.”
Final rescheduling, course evaluations
For the first time this year, all students with exams on Dec. 23 will have the option of rescheduling them. Currently, no finals are scheduled on Dec. 23, but it is possible that some could be moved to Dec. 23.
Kapusta said that although final exams are sometimes scheduled late in the month, professors are usually accommodating.
“I’ve had a final scheduled on the 23rd and the professor has just moved it anyway,” Kapusta said. “People are reasonable.”
Mendes is also working with Rose Razaghian, the director of Academic Planning and Analysis at Columbia College, to create a mechanism for public course evaluations. Yatrakis said that the new CourseWorks will make public course evaluations possible, should some departments or schools choose to release them.
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