It’s not the unveiling of the iPhone, or the switch from analog to digital TV.
But it may have been responsible for many students being able to breeze right past the administrative offices on the first day of the new semester.
This year, USM and other UMaine schools have continued a years-long shift toward more comprehensive and modern online services intended to allow everybody in the system more access to their personal information.
This Fall, it was managing class schedules that most prominently made the leap from paper catalogs and WebDSIS to a newer web-based service known as MaineStreet. The software, a product of PeopleSoft/Oracle, is one of only a handful of database applications available to an institution the size of USM, .
And while a mid-sized school, moving the University’s data over from old, antiquated systems and formats is no small task. Just ask Steve Rand, USM’s registrar, who says that managing the overhaul now makes up about 90% of his work week. That involves not only training employees to use the new software – they tend to pick it up a bit slower than students – but dealing with the milieu of issues that pop up daily. (Most isolated and the result of faulty record-keeping, he assures us.)
The payoff will be that, ideally, Rand and his staff will spend far less time juggling this information in the future.
“Its an internet-based database,” he says. “The purpose of it is to allow the user – student, instructor – to get the data out themselves.”
And that they have been doing.
Administrative assistant Sue Turner, a familiar face to students who come into Payson Smith Hall waving their multicolored add/drop forms, noticed a much more peaceful opening day.
The offices were still open until seven at night for the first week of classes, but as far as she could tell those endless lines running far out the door and down the hallway never materialized.
And since there have been no major system failures so far, the most persistent web-related complaint to come her way has been students looking for their lost passwords. Such problems get forwarded straight out of the building, and into the Help Desk at Luther Bonney – where closing time is always more flexible.
Mary Beth Davidson, assistant director of software support, says that she hasn’t noticed an uptick in HelpDesk reports, though it was anxiously anticipated. As we speak, she logs a couple of reported bugs: in one case, the systems more diligent security measures lock a user out for no obvious reason.
In another, a feature that displays student course schedules into a calendar format arbitrarily omits chunks of classes and even entire sessions.
These, she says, are the kind of minor issues that will be better addressed as the school more fully implements the new tools.
“I’m pretty sure Web DSIS has been around since people were banging rocks together to make fire,” says Davidson.
She’s referring to that older, more earth-toned website that students, faculty and staff previously had to log into to keep track of their schedules, grades and finances. It wasn’t just the look of that program that caused some to wonder exactly what century their school was operating in – from the point-of-view of online security, the program’s methods could seem highly questionable. Everybody, from students to staff, logged in using a social security number.
“That is way too much visibility. We needed a tool that could really grow and respect student privacy.” Davidson says.
The registrars office projects that all tasks will be completely moved away from the old site by January 2009.