Class registration for the spring is now underway, but the interface that greets students when they log onto BU Brain has undergone several changes that have unnecessarily complicated the registration process.
The most apparent change is the option students see on the initial registration page to either do a “Course Search” or an “Advanced Search.” The “search option” brings you to a foreign, unfamiliar page where class sections are not listed individually, but rather, with links for each course to a separate page listing out the course’s sections.
The system is non-user-friendly to the point that the website puts up a disclaimer that reads, “Please use the Advanced Search button to search for courses and view the schedule,” and provides instructions for viewing the class schedule.
The “Advanced Search” will bring you to the old, familiar view, but issues persist.
Before you do any searches at all, you must first select at least one subject. For people who know the departments their desired courses are in, this doesn’t present much of a problem. But for many of us looking for a course to fulfill a general education credit, take a course with a certain professor or enroll in a course at a certain day and time, this is quite a hindrance.
Not every student knows all the academic disciplines in which they can fulfill their “P” credit, nor do they know if their favorite professor teaches classes in English and creative writing, both, one or neither.
The website’s instructions for subverting this issue suggest you highlight more than one subject if you want to search for classes that span more than one department. It is a feasible option, but then again, one that’s not particularly user-friendly for students looking to search through non-alphabetically linked subjects, like say Anthropology and Women’s Studies. And of course the old way of not having to select a subject at all was not broken and did not need fixing.
The Registrar’s Office said the changes were implemented after the software vendor behind BU Brain, SunGard, or the SUNY-central software services hub, Student Information & Campus Administrative Services (SICAS) upgraded its software “to increase functionality.”
Regardless of why the changes to the BU Brain interface were made, they are less than ideal for the student looking for classes beyond preference of subject. We hope registration for the fall 2012 classes provides some relief.