Printed course guides eliminated

Bowing to the pressures of an increasingly technological and environmentally friendly age, the University will no longer offer print versions of course guides for the College of Literature, Science and the Arts and will entirely concentrate its efforts on improving its online course guide.

"The course guide, as it is, currently is at a dead-end," said Bob Wallin, director of the Office of Academic Information and Publications. "The possibilities for the online version will take the courseguide to a higher level."

The change will save the University $10,000 in printing costs each semester, Wallin said. About 39,000 course guides are printed for the fall and winter terms alone.

The online course guide will offer more features than the printed version, Wallin said. Each course description presently is linked to CRISP information so students can find out class locations, times and availabilities.

"Each course has a link that will give you the real time availability," said Mark Garrett, student academic affairs Webmaster. "It can tell the students where it meets, when it meets and how many spots are left."

Course descriptions will no longer be limited by the space constraints of printed pages. Links to University department Web pages, class homepages and even syllabi for courses all will be available online in the future.

"We're no longer going to be constrained by the 150-word limit," Wallin said. "The online course guide is also going to be accurate to the minute. By the time a course guide is printed, there are usually over a hundred changes in the courses."

Students said they have mixed feelings about going online to find course descriptions.

"I suppose it's better for the environment," said LSA senior Kara Kobrzycki. "I would prefer to have a hard copy. I won't be too excited about looking at courses online."

Other students greeted the news of added features with enthusiasm.

"I think once they put the extras in, it will be a lot better than having the regular course guide," said LSA sophomore Philippa Lehar.

The driving force behind this change was LSA Dean Edie Goldenberg, who has been pursuing to put the LSA course guide exclusively online for the past few years.

There were "complaints received in the past about hard copy that can't be easily updated," Goldenberg said.

"Having an online version will permit regular updates and we regard that as an enormous advantage for our students," Goldenberg said. "We expect students to be pleased to have accurate, up-to-date information."

The time schedule, which is published by the Office of the Registrar, will continue to be available in print and online.

Assistant Registrar Lynn Adelman said students and faculty still need and want print versions of the time schedule.

02-26-98