Registration in the new Student Information System opens March 11

Assign permissions, manage overload requests, remove service indicators — all important tasks to master before the first registration cycle opens with the new Student Information System (SIS) on March 11.

“Academic department administrators and advisors, in particular, would benefit from building their familiarity around these features and processes in the new SIS,” says Linda Hull, manager of course registration, examinations and academic scheduling.

The best way to do that is to complete the self-study modules related to registration on Moodle. If you perform these functions, but do not have these modules in your myConcordia portal, please contact sisproject@concordia.ca.

Registration Relief

Hull, who helped to create those modules, is a proponent of the new SIS and what it will do to improve the registration process for staff and students alike. “For the academic departments, it’ll be much more efficient with the new automated waitlisting feature,”

Registration will become more streamlined, too, due to features like the advising module, she adds. “It aims to enhance the academic advising process with the degree audit reports and a new ‘what if’ tool for students to assess the impact of making changes to their program, area of study or concentration.”

What does it all mean? Students will be better prepared when they meet with advisors. Plus, students can perform many administrative tasks through the My Student Centre self-service dashboard, thus freeing up faculty and staff to focus on higher-level tasks.

The nuts and bolts of waitlisting

While waitlisting improves efficiency, it’s important to remind students that it isn’t a magic bullet to get into every course.

“Getting on a waitlist is great, but it doesn’t automatically guarantee students admittance into a course and all courses do not necessarily have a waitlist,” says Tucker. “Some courses opt out of having a waitlist, for reasons related to subject matter and room size. If a course has no waitlist, this is indicated by a ‘0’ in the field that shows the size of the waitlist.”

Each department decides which courses will offer waitlisting and they determine the size of the waitlists. Students put their names on the waitlist on a “first come, first serve” basis. The waitlisting tool automatically checks for prerequisites and it respects priority students, so students don’t have to worry about being passed over for another student from outside the department.

New training for academic advisors

Any type of enterprise-level system change like the SIS requires a period of adjustment. The SIS is a package solution from Oracle/PeopleSoft called Campus Solutions. Although Campus Solutions is appreciated for being intuitive and easy to use, a learning curve is to be expected.

Online training material is being prepared for advisors involved with registration. Topics will include assigning overrides, removal of registration flags and adding comments to a student file.  In-person training sessions are being scheduled. Once times and rooms have been established, invitations will be sent to everyone involved.

In the meantime, it may be useful to review Hull’s top five most relevant tasks to master in the SIS to prepare for registration.

To learn specifics about the SIS support structure and more, consult the SIS Project Renewal Hub.