Online traffic causes problems with early registration

The opening day of registration for spring 2010 has brought some expected technological problems for students trying to enroll in Alamo Colleges.

Despite repeated tries, access to the system has been denied for many students.

Jose Avila, land PC technician for district information technology, told The Ranger Monday afternoon that high traffic has caused login problems to the student services Web page students use for online registration.

That is to be expected, he said, when a higher-than-usual number of students are trying to register at the same time.

Activity of the student services page stays low for most of the year, until registration crunch times, when activity increases dramatically, he said.

Avila said the implementation of registration schedules — whereby students registering for classes will have to pay their tuition in a defined date range — has helped give students more opportunities to get the classes they need by eliminating the ability to register early and pay at the last minute.

For example, students who register through Dec. 5 must pay by 12:30 p.m. Dec. 5, and students who register Dec. 6-12 must pay by 12:30 p.m. Dec. 12.

Giving students longer access to the site can also give them opportunities to register early, but he said the district’s servers need to be serviced and the data needs to be retrieved from them.

This is the reason the site cannot be up 24 hours a day.

He also said the district cannot really justify increasing the capacity of the servers to handle heavy traffic that occurs only a few days out of the year during registration crunches.

Heavy traffic usually subsides after a few days of the initial onslaught of students rushing to get registered, he said.

According to the printed class schedule for this college, students can continue to register through Jan. 16, although classes begin Jan. 11.

Lina Silva, vice chancellor of student success, sent an e-mail to faculty and staff Nov. 13 saying that students registering on or after the first day of the semester beginning in January will not be allowed to enroll in a course that has already met.

She wrote that the faculty and counselors had for years recommended the elimination of late registration and that registering late hinders students’ success if they miss the first class day.

Students will not be allowed to register on the Web for classes that have already begun, but students may visit academic departments to see if they will make exceptions.

For more information on registering at this college, call 486-0700.

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2 comments

Your name

Wed Nov 18 2009 12:55

the trade off is well worth it considering the price of other colleges. even UTSA got hacked and lost all their info, and they pay so much more. we should be very grateful for this opportunity to save money. particularly for us who would not otherwise be able to afford a college education.

Your name

Tue Nov 17 2009 12:19

I personally think the online registration process for the college is horrible. I understand that there is a influx of user trying to register on opening day but there needs to be a change. I logged in at eight and it took me approximately 3 hours of refreshing and reloading pages to access the option to add/drop classes. Unfortunately, when the page finally had finished loading, I was informed of a registration hold on my account. A hold that had not shown up prior to this date. I ended up having to go to SAC, wait in line for over 2 hours to have this hold removed, and then after another hour of trying to log in I was finally able to register for classes. I would assume it would make sense to inform students of a registration hold before the actual registration date. This alone would create less frustration for students and counseling staff during the registration process.

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