More than 10,000 students logged onto PolyPlanner since the academic advising tool launched three weeks ago, but only 5,000 students have actually used the tool.
Suha Saya
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Though PolyPlanner’s demand data will first influence the Winter 2015 schedule, consequences for not using the tool will go into effect for the Fall 2014 registration cycle.
More than 10,000 students logged onto PolyPlanner since its release three weeks ago. However, the number of students who actually used the tool was half of that — only 5,000. In the future, students will be assigned to the last registration rotation and will not be allowed to use any priorities if they do not take advantage of the tool, university registrar Cem Sunata said.
“In order to make the consequences more relevant, we wanted to make that for the immediate term,” he said. “It’s not necessarily the term that needs the data, but the term they’re registering (for) right now.”
During March, students will be required to build their own PolyPlan for Summer 2014 (if they are taking summer classes), Fall 2014 and Winter 2015, an email from the Office of the Registrar said.
“They need to plan at least one year out during the month of March to really impact class schedule,” Sunata said. “Obviously, if they’re graduating earlier, that’s a different story.”
According to the Office of the Registrar, if a student decides not to participate, it will be on them.
“They do not have the right to jump ahead of all the students who participated and who told us their demand,” Sunata said. “To us, that means that they don’t necessarily have that need to be the first one to get classes and probably don’t have a problem being last.”
The deadline for using the tool will be set every quarter. As the deadline approaches, the Office of the Registrar will send reminder emails to students who have been inactive on PolyPlanner.
“Those dates are almost a quarter long away from each other,” Sunata said. “This shows that it’s not exactly a meaningless consequence; it’s very meaningful.”
PolyPlanner, Sunata added, should be taken advantage of by everyone — including those in special circumstances, such as students who are changing majors.
“First of all, students’ change of major is not final until the registrar’s office, in cooperation with their ICMA (Individualized Change of Major agreement) coordinator, enters the final change of major into the system,” he said.
In the current change of major policy, students are expected to still make degree progress in their current majors while taking their desired major’s classes. If they do not meet requirements of the ICMA, they will be denied entrance into the major and will never be able to apply to that same change of major again.
To Sunata, this means until that change is finalized in the system, students are still in that major and expected to make degree progress in that specific major.
Therefore, PolyPlanner is still relevant, he said.
“You cannot put your life on hold for two quarters thinking that you will change your major,” Sunata said. “Students can intelligently take general education courses that apply to both majors or support both majors … So from that perspective, it’s (beneficial) to students.”
When a student does change their major, their degree audits automatically change. PolyPlanner’s roadmap will show requirements for the new major path, he said.
“This does not affect change-of-major students, because PolyPlanner is not limiting you to take degree applicable courses,” he said. “You can take other courses as well.”
Associate registrar Debbie Arseneau agreed.
“If a student is looking to change their major, or are actually in an ICMA, they can simply right-click in any term and add any class they plan to take.”
The tool will give the Office of the Registrar the ability to provide course demand information to academic departments when they are beginning to build the schedule of classes for a particular term. Departments will take into account students’ plans, Arseneau said.
Sunata said the Office of the Registrar simply wants to take students’ input into consideration.
“The students are the ones suffering during registration, saying that they’re not getting classes or that their priority is not high enough,” he said. “I don’t want students to concentrate on the mandatory nature of this … I want students to think that this is their opportunity to influence the class schedule because they’ve never before been given an opportunity like this one.”