Get ready to register for summer courses using the Student Information System
While you’re still fresh from reading week, now’s a good time to get familiar with registration-related tasks in the new Student Information System (SIS).
With registration for the Summer 2015 term opening for eligible students on March 11, it’s important to know what functions you can perform in your My Student Centre self-service dashboard.
Consequently, there are how-to guides on the SIS student hub that take you step-by-step through a variety of tasks, such as browsing the course catalogue, searching for a class, registering and using the automated waitlist function — a much anticipated new tool to simplify the registration process.
“The waitlisting tool is a big plus for students,” says Akeyla Liverpool, a third-year bachelor’s student in Human Environment who helped to create the how-to navigation guides. “Instead of going to the department and standing in line, we can put ourselves on a waitlist from work or home, using the dashboard.”
The nuts and bolts of waitlisting
“Please keep in mind that getting on a waitlist doesn’t automatically guarantee admittance into a course, and all courses do not necessarily have a waitlist,” says Bradley Tucker, associate vice-president of Registrarial Services and the University Registrar. “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 respects priority students, so nobody has to worry about being passed over for another student from outside the department — unless, of course, there’s a class split,” says Linda Hull, manager of course registration, examinations and academic scheduling. “It’s a very smart tool that checks to make sure students on the waitlist have the proper prerequisites. The result will be a more streamlined registration process.”
Increased autonomy
Students can now swap one course for another — an English class for an economics course, for example.
“In the old system,” says Liverpool, “we could only move to a different section of a course by ourselves.” Moreover, within the self-service dashboard, students now have the flexibility to select a course’s lecture, tutorial and lab as three separate decisions, instead of one solid block.
All how-to guides, a waitlisting Q&A, cheat sheets and FAQs are available on your SIS student hub.
How to get registration help
If you’ve checked the how-to guides posted on the SIS student hub under “Course Registration” but still have specific questions about registering, please contact the Birks Student Service Centre.
You may also visit an SIS HELP kiosk (see times and locations) in person.
If you receive error messages while navigating the dashboard, or experience technical difficulties doing things like uploading documents, please contact the IITS Service Desk at 514-848-2424 ext. 7613.
Get ready for upcoming registration by reading the how-to guides under Course Registration on the SIS student hub.