With the registration dates for the summer and fall
semesters approaching, the Registrar’s Office at the University of Wisconsin
finalized the elimination of the previous web-based system. This means class
timetables for summer 2008 and fall 2008 will not be available in a webpage
format, and students will be forced to use the new and “improved”
Integrated Student Information System. Yet, with its many inadequacies and its
inherent slowness, the registrar’s decision to eliminate the web-based system
and force students to use ISIS was entirely unwise and premature.

To begin, the old HTML-based system, which relied on a
series of webpages, is considerably faster than the new ISIS. Not only is the
new system always slow, but it is much easier to overwhelm than the HTML
version during the peak registration period. I doubt there is a student who
hasn’t experienced the frustration of staring at ISIS’s loading page for a long
period of time while it performs what should be a simple task for such an
“advanced” system. Even UW registrar Joanne Berg acknowledged that
the system is slow, and told The Badger Herald the Registrar’s Office has
“a lot of programmers working on how to make it faster.”

Furthermore, many aspects of ISIS are obviously incomplete.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve reached a virtual dead-end in the
so-called homepage, which is curiously not the main Student Center page, and
had no way to go back to the Student Center main menu but to close and reopen
the entire system. The section that displays holds is so small it’s almost
unnoticeable, and since the Registrar’s Office — for some unknown reason —
does not inform students of holds on their records, a hold can easily go
unnoticed until it’s registration time. By then it’s too late.

Another frustrating aspect of ISIS is the lack of any form of
back or forward links on many of its pages. For example, if a student chooses a
lecture and a discussion but then changes his or her mind, he or she has no way
of going back to their search and instead has to start a whole new one.

Also, the old web-based system enabled students to check
open and closed sections within seconds. While the ISIS’s multi-step program
not only takes an ungodly amount of time in comparison to the old system, it
also only enables a student to choose one section at a time to add to his or
her wish list to keep track of whether it’s open or closed. This is extremely
frustrating, especially when taking into account courses with multiple lectures
and discussions that open and close almost daily during registration time.

Despite all its inadequacies, it seems the registrar’s
office still views the ISIS as “a better product,” according to Ms.
Berg — an overstatement to say the least. Another reason cited by Ms. Berg for
the elimination of the web-based schedule is that the university cannot afford
to keep both systems. I won’t claim to know anything about the internal
financial matters of the Registrar’s Office, but I can’t help but wonder, is
the money the university saved worth the frustration of the students,
especially when the aim of this entire move is to better serve them?

As it stands today, ISIS is obviously inferior to the old
system, and the registrar’s decision to discontinue the old system is unwise
and premature. If the university wants to know what services not to cut during
this budget crunch, make DoIt priority No. 1. UW needs to restore the web-based
timetable until ISIS becomes a complete and adequate product.

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Ammar Al Marzouqi ([email protected]) is a
freshman majoring in computer engineering.