Ethan Hague, Campus Carrier staff writer
Elizabeth Montiel-Alvarado, Campus Carrier staff writer
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) implemented a new course search function for VikingWeb in time for spring semester class registration, which allows students to create their schedule in calendar form and register to multiple classes at once.
“We’ve been moving toward this new version of registration since 2019, we tried it in 2019 and it was a disaster,” Chief Information Officer, Penny Evans-Plants, said. “We pulled back and we have been very hesitant to try again, but what we heard repeatedly from students who tested it then was that they loved many things about it until it actually got to registration day.”
According to David Sipocz, an assistant professor of communication on the IT, the new function was timed well with registration.
“It’s brand new for you guys [students] and it’s kind of awesome, it dovetails with the new registration process that you guys just completed,” said Sipocz.
Since the class sizes at Berry continue to grow, the system was designed to be able to handle the additional traffic without crashing.
“Virtually every sort of thing that could have gone wrong [with the previous server] did, the server wasn’t able to handle the traffic,” Sipocz said. “So it’s been a great relief to everybody that it’s worked fairly well this time around, after basically rebuilding the infrastructure from the ground up.”
The previous search function, ‘Legacy Course Search,’ was also more cumbersome to use, requiring students to enter more specific information about the courses they wished to take.
OIT made sure they kept the features students liked to improve efficiency.
“Now the way it works is you can go out ahead of time and add it to the course planning portlet which you can see in calendar view. Now you can checkout like Amazon cart,” said Evans-Plants. “The goal is to make it quicker and easier for the student. This gives you that ability to plan out your semester ahead of time and see what your schedule would look like.”
Now, students only have to enter the course code, instructor, department and location. However, the previous version can still be found on VikingWeb at the bottom of the Course Registration page.
“I thought [the new system] worked pretty well, especially the plan function, since that let you register for all of your classes at once instead of individually,” freshman Anna Wade said.
Following course registration, there were still some bugs and issues seen with the new system, though.
“We had a small but significant number of students who had course authorization issues, that there was a delay in those being approved,” said Evans-Plants. Although OIT is unsure of what exactly was causing this issue, they will analyze all the data received and work on a solution.
“We didn’t see any performance issues with Viking Web itself, but we see what was happening with the database server, the CPUs [central processing units] were getting close to being maxed out during the first five minutes of each registration period. It was close enough we feel we need to take some action before next registration,” said Evans-Plants.
Between now and the next registration, OIT plants to make the needed improvements and continue monitoring student feedback.
“We would like to add some processing power to the database server before the March registration” Evans-Plant said. “We identified another school to talk to who has a similar set up to us to see how it’s configured compared to ours.”
Additional issues that were addressed or are in the process of being addressed include the login button being missing, which was resolved on September 27, and the VikingWeb Mobile version, which is being upgraded. Other issues and the times they were resolved are detailed on the Community page in VikingWeb.
“OIT has worked extensively within the confines of what we have with VikingWeb,” Sipocz said. “There’s only so much we can do, there’s only so much customization that we can have with it, and there really isn’t competition that we can go to [as an alternative]. There’s like one other source, but we are in a constant search for how we can improve.”
Sipocz said that there are no large-scale updates planned for VikingWeb anytime soon, and it will remain the platform that Berry uses for course registration and campus resources.
“There are always updates, but nothing that will be substantial that changes the interface or anything like that,” Sipocz said. “That’s [one of] the restrictions that we’re working with. I do know that [OIT] will certainly be looking at the data from registration, to be able to continue to tweak things and hopefully continue to make things better. Unless we have a massive influx of money on the level of like a big state school, where we can explore something that is vastly more expensive, any switch isn’t going to happen.”
OIT is also considering updating or changing certain student software programs as well, while leaving others in place.
“We just formed an ad hoc committee to evaluate alternatives to Kaltura, for video management and storage options,” Sipocz said. “We have to pay overage fees that are pretty ‘up there,’ and they keep coming back and telling us that we still have overages after removing large amounts of storage over the summer. If there’s something that’s viable and works for us, that could be potentially a switch to make. We would make sure that faculty have a voice in that since they are the ones that use it.”
In Fall 2018, Canvas was adopted as the main platform for course administration, and it has been generally well-received by faculty and students.
“We are thrilled with so far how the switch to Canvas has been, because we used to have course stuff on VikingWeb,” Sipocz said. “That was not fun or easy for anybody. A lot of faculty members would not use it because it was so convoluted and difficult.”
Berry plans to renew its contract with Canvas next year.
“The folks in OIT work very hard to make sure that we are taken care of in as many ways as they possibly can, including working late nights, early mornings, weekends,” Sipocz said. “Every single person on the IT staff has been here all week for registration, on site. It’s very challenging, there’s a lot of complex issues that IT has to deal with, not just with VikingWeb but with a lot of things, and they navigate that truly to the best of their ability. I think sometimes that we forget that they feel the frustration as just as much as we do.”