Wolverine Access still needs 'fine tuning' tuning'

By Karen Schwartz

Daily Staff Reporter

After switching to online registration, the University plans to continue tweaking the Wolverine Access site.

Continuing problems include: The unavailability of unofficial transcripts; confusing classes offered under two departments, sometimes listing closed classes as available; and the site often moves slowly or is too busy.

"It said transcripts would be working but it's been a whole semester," Engineering senior Jay Scheiderer said.

For LSA senior Alan Kohler, the site's main problem is speed and accessibility. "The system gets bogged down real easily and I don't think it's as user friendly as they think it is," Kohler said. "It takes a long time to get in to Wolverine Access and do what you need to do."

Communications Coordinator for Michigan Administrative Information Services Linda Green said the University has plans to alleviate these problems.

"We continue to fine tune the system," Green said. "We've made quite a few improvements between September and December, and we're not done ... It's a matter of small changes that add up to a better system."

The site states that unofficial transcripts will be available this term. But Green said the University cannot offer them online yet because of problems with the application that ITD uses.

Green said unofficial transcripts should be available before the end of the Winter term, although she could not confirm a date.

In response to classes showing seats available when they are actually full, Green said it's the result of cross-referenced classes, that is, classes that are listed in two departments. "Once 30 kids have signed up, 10 seats might still show up as open because they're taken up by kids registering from the other direction," she said.

Green said the problem won't be fixed immediately because it would mean taking the system down during registration. But Green said the problem will be addressed sometime after the drop/add deadline. "That will be fixed before registration starts for the Fall term in April," she said.

As for general system slowdowns - the day before classes, the first day of classes and the day after classes begin - are when Wolverine Access reaches its semester peak, Green said.

"We have tens of thousands of students who hit the system at the same time. With CRISP you'd get a busy signal," she said. "And it's not just students hitting the systems, it's the staff helping the students ... they're hitting the same system."

Green said she expected the system, designed to handle 750 to 1,000 people to slow down because of the onset of classes.

System activity is monitored, according to Green, from 7 a.m. until 12 a.m.

Green said that the site easily handles the normal traffic of 700 to 800 users at a time.

"There isn't just one thing we could do to make the system go faster when 30 percent of the students are using it at one time ... If there was, we'd do it."