Advising Center to Improve Registration Process

Spring registration is just around the corner, and students have a lot to prepare for. Advisors begin their advising sessions, and students begin planning their schedules. There are many resources for students to access during the registration period to allow a smooth process.

Wolf Watch, which is accessed through BanWeb, is a major resource. It is used to anticipate future classes and understand which courses need to be taken to stay on track for graduation.

Another resource is the student’s advisors. When students meet with their assigned advisor, they get a full understanding of what courses they can take next semester in order to stay on track for graduation.

Students are encouraged to plan ahead and not wait until the day before registration opens to meet with their advisor and plan their schedule. Also, the inconvenience of unwanted account holds can falter the plans for registering. Before sitting down to plan a course schedule for next semester, students should check to make sure there are no holds on their account via BanWeb. Fortunately, once registration opens, it remains open for several weeks. This allows students to change schedules if necessary.

Melissa Tarrant, advising center director, discusses a new registration process that will be available to students very soon.

“The University of West Georgia is going to implement a new program called ‘College Scheduler’ to assist students in putting together the course combinations they need,” said Tarrant.

She explained that the program is a very user-friendly, robust tool that will allow students to plug in the courses they want to take and block out any times they cannot take classes, such as work hours. The program will then generate all possible combinations of those courses and students simply choose which combination they want. After they select the course combination they want, they will be able to register for those courses in BanWeb without using CRNs or the Course Search features they have used before.

“Those features will still be available if students choose to use them,” said Tarrant. “College Scheduler will make a time-consuming and often frustrating process much simpler.”

The program is being tested now to work out the kinks and to gain a better understanding of the program. However, if all goes well, students will be able to use College Scheduler when registration opens at the end of October. If it is not available for October, students can expect to have access to the program in the spring.

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