Guest Speakers:
Dallas Denery: Professor in the History Department, and also Dean for Currculum, faculty representative for the transition to Workday, Michael Cato: Senior VP and Chief Information Officer, and Martina Duncan: Registrar at the College.
Initial Presentation
Denery: Course registration for Spring 2024 will be the last time Polaris is used. Mar 6th, 2025 Polaris will cease to be the registration system, and Mar 7th, 2025 Workday will be fully integrated. Working on videos, FAQs, and training sessions to guide students through transition.
Cato: The challenge was that other options were more expensive and problematic. Polaris is actually not one unified system, it is actually a collection of systems made by Bowdoin. Every time updates were needed for those systems it would take too long due to the personalized nature of the interface. Maintenance was taking too much time and resources. The system was brittle and constantly required labor-intensive updates.
Duncan: Registration with Workday will start in Fall 2025. Classes will be available on Workday, where you can build your schedule with your advisor previous to registration windows. First come, first serve using pre-saved schedules that have already been checked for eligibility. Waitlisting in Workday will be visible to students: students will know their place on the waitlist, and be notified if a seat is available.
Q&A:
Harper: Are departments anticipating that students may have a higher demand for certain core classes?
Duncan: We work with the department. This time we established preferencing is gone if previously shut out so some classes may have found that they need to make sure the class structure is such that seats could be saved for specific class standings.
Abigail: Is first come first serve also for the individual, not only first come first serve in terms of class division?
Duncan: Yes, it will also apply to the individual. But, because of the previously saved schedules it’s not a ‘panic registration’ and you are able to rely on your saved backup schedules. The advantage is that the system is live and you can see if you get in and waitlist yourself immediately.
Elliot: What would you recommend for people with class standings who do not have priority?
Duncan: Time-based registration is one thing, but there are other elements such as seat reserving that allow faculty to take control and break away from the simple first-come first-serve system that may disadvantage students with lower class standing.
Denery: The current system has a lot of hidden “tricks” that advantages and disadvantages certain people. At a liberal arts college, the focus should be on creating a variety instead of focusing on one class.
Maxwell: How can you ensure that the system won’t crash?
Cato: Workday is a global company that is designed for high overload. What we have struggled with historically is rather that we run Polaris locally, which causes it to be more vulnerable to being unstable.
Abigail: Since the system is based on pre-saved schedules, how can we ensure that it would not be chaos to have to add classes to one schedule and then have to drop classes in another during our registration window?
Duncan: You should be making schedules that are strategic in Plan B, C, etc. If you know that you are requesting a class with high demand, you should add a class to your second-choice schedule that is your best second choice. The classes you got in the first round are secured. It’s kind of like round one, round two registration in one window.
Nolan: What would the advising process look like now that we are using Workday?
Duncan: What your advisor meeting looks like shouldn’t change at all, you meet with them before, make your saved schedules, and then submit.
Vincent: Depending on the classes that they get into, would their second choices change so that the times would be advantageous to the students (i.e. not have 4 classes a day)?
Duncan: In ‘round two’, you can add and drop, swap live. This would allow you to take control of your schedule.
Vincent: The different backup schedules that you send, do they run at once?
Duncan: No, they run as alternates.
Andy: How do other schools run course registration? How long will Add/Drop last?
Duncan: Most schools do this. When your course registration windows open, you can add a class, drop a class and add yourself to a waitlist. If someone drops a class you were on the waitlist for (if they were for example offered a seat for another class), you would be notified and allowed to add your class real time.
Shreya: How would this work for example for Pre-Med, who need to take specific courses?
Duncan: We have built in ‘Programs of Study’ to know the demand and open up relevant courses.
Harper: How would professor override for pre-requistes work?
Duncan: It would be integrated directly into Workday.
Fabiola: What about class over enrollment?
Duncan: Also be integrated directly into Workday.
Ainsely: Wouldn’t this put first-year students at a disadvantage since they may not know what the classes are like now that class registration happens before their arrival on campus?
Denery: There’s a survey about these experiences so we can have feedback to integrate this kinds of changes.
Aidan: So that survey is going to all first years?
Denery: Yes, that is my understanding.
Andy: Will there be some guidance if you already have a major in mind as an incoming first-year?
Denery: I would ask you to put that specific question on the survey so we can make sure that gets to students if they need it.
Vincent: Would there be any way for students who know they will need to have certain classes before they are off campus (for example, for study abroad) to get the classes they need?
Duncan: Departments will work with student on that, which may mean an override in a class and is often on a case-by-case basis depending on the department.
Elliott: Where did this transition originate and where did they gather feedback? How were students involved in that process?
Cato: There were conversations with students and student leaders, although there was no one specific strong connection. I acknowledge that this seems like a sudden change, although this transition has been happening for a long time and through conversations with students.
Vincent: Will professors be able to directly work with edge cases, such as overrides?
Duncan: Yes, they will be able to do it directly on Workday as a sort of workflow where you can request something and the faculty gets a notification directly on Workday. No intermediaries.
Closing
Denery: We want to set up a group of students that will help us figure out the best way to advertise these changes. We would like to get our first meeting together in about two to three weeks. What are your opinions on the best approaches for this?
Eisa: We at BSG are more than happy to help with that and I’m sure ResLife would be willing to help explain the process as well.
Denery: The week before the Spring semester, mid-January, we test all the scenarios of students from entry to Bowdoin and to graduation. This is a paid position we offer, where we ideally have 10 students participate and give us feedback on the new system. And this is similar to Eisa’s question, which asked about student involvement in this process, we have had a committee that included students that helped give us feedback on which were the best design choices.