Banner system will improve online registration

Say good-night to ocvaxc. Next semester, students will find that Oberlin's registration program will have received a facelift.

Instead of using Telnet to sign on to ocvaxc to register for classes next April, students will be able to register over the web using brand-new, more powerful servers. In order to access the database students must have access to a web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer.

The Oberlin Project for Unified Systems (OPUS) is upgrading the College's administrative computer system by installing the Systems and Computer Technology Corporation's Banner2000 Web for Students module.

Considering Thursday's temporary crash of the current registrar program, the change will be welcome. The program was offline for several hours Thursday afternoon, resulting in many visibly distraught and confused students.

Students will begin to see immediate changes in the system. "The primary visible change [to students] will be the web interface. The underlying relational database structure changes more significantly, but this will remain largely transparent to the students," said Administration Computing Project Manager Monica Wachter, who is also the project manager for OPUS.

Before Banner, each administrative department had its own records of students, faculty and staff. This system proved very inefficient. For example, if the Office of Financial Aid needed information about a student that was not in their records, they were forced to search other departments' records until they found that data.

"The Banner system will replace all financial aid, employee and student records," said Wachter. "There will be one person, one record." Each administrative department will have access to the same core information and be able to update it for the benefit of all the departments.

"There will be extensive testing of Banner over Winter Term," said Wachter. During the second week of February, the OPUS team working on the Student Records module of Banner will hold a mock registration in which key systems will be tested at levels close to those expected in April.

Among the final decisions to be made about the Banner module are its name and look. In order to encourage campus input, OPUS is sponsoring a week-long suggestion period. OPUS Communications Manager Ami Berger said, "We'd like any student, faculty or staff member to submit ideas for the web product's name and logo. This is their chance to help us, and help us help students."

The Oberlin Online Oversight Committee and the Office of College Relations will make the final decision.

"We're looking for a simple and clean look," said Berger. Also, in designing a logo for the page "you must also take into account download time." Larger and more complex files take longer to download from the net, even when on campus.

Ocvaxc will be retired after Financial Aid starts using the new Banner system in February 2000; however, the current registration is the last gasp for direct student interaction with ocvaxc.

Got a CAN?: College sophomore Lavell Blackwell logs on to a computer in Mudd. (photo by Pauline Shapiro)