Not long after the class registration site changed, a notice was posted that some changes would be made in 2021. The points to be revised in 2021 are integrated operation of the class registration period, raising the maximum number of credits waiting for the class registration, and expanding the subjects to the batch registration of the wish bag. There have been only minor changes in the past, but these appear to be big moves away from the existing system. The Pharos wants to let students know how the current system operates and how it will change in 2021.

Before looking at the 2021 class registration system, the Pharos would like to take a look at the additional class registration operation in the second semester. With the change from the existing site to the new course registration site (http://sugang.kyonggi.ac.kr/), the site design and site management policies have both changed. The major change is that the new site is optimized for Chrome and Firefox, and users are required to enter a string if someone attempts to register more than the number of times set up by the administrator to prevent the use of macro programs. Next, students can block pop-up windows for easy registration and prevent processing functions when logging in multiple times. As a result, if students log in on more than one PC at the same time with the same class number, only the last logged-in user can save the class lists and the rest will be logged out. In addition, there were points optimized for 1920 x 1080 resolution.

There are three changes to the class registration system. The first is the integrated operation of the class registration period. Currently, the registration period is divided into the primary major, engineering certification, and secondary major. Although originally the registration period was divided into the first day of the primary major, the second day of the primary major + engineering certification, and the third day of the primary major + secondary major + engineering certification, there is no such distinction next year. Now, all students can apply on the first day by integrating the registration period for all subjects. A notable highlight is that the waiting number will be maintained for three days within the class registration period and deleted before the class correction. The second change is to raise the maximum number of credits waiting for class registration. Currently, students can apply for 9 credits next year, although they have 6 credits. The third change is expanding the subjects to the batch registration of the wish bag. Currently, registration for preliminary classes in the wish bag is automatically processed in batch only for primary major subjects of the first day. Starting next year, subjects registered in the main class will be processed in batch regardless of engineering certification or secondary major. If the main subject contains both first and second engineering certifications at the same time, the registration cannot be processed in batch. Then, what do students think about the existing registration system and the new system for 2021?

< Survey >

1. Are you satisfied with the current class registration system?

1) Satisfied: 22.2%

2) Dissatisfied: 77.8%

2. What do you think about the changes to the class registration in 2021?

1) Positive: 61.1%

2) Negative: 38.9%

When asked if they were satisfied with the current class registration system, about 78 percent of respondents were dissatisfied. The reasons for being satisfied were the waiting credit system, the distinction between the primary major and secondary major, and the convenient website design. On the other hand, the top reasons for dissatisfaction were the waiting credit system, separation between primary major and secondary major, and slow Internet speed. Opinions on class registration for 2021 were positive at about 62 percent. As for the positive reasons, it was followed by an increase in the maximum number of credits waiting for classes and an increase in the number of subjects registering batch for classes. As for the negative reasons, students answered in the order of integrated operation of the class registration period and the expansion of the subjects registering batch. The opinions about improving class registration were an increase of people attending a class, additional classes, and registration according to year.

The changes to the class registration have been announced, but only the approximate decision was posted and no detailed explanation was found. Thus, the Pharos interviewed Jeong Seo-young, a member of the Academic Affairs Support Team in charge of the class registration system, to listen to the supplementary explanations and questions.

Q. Please introduce yourself briefly.

A. I’m Jeong Seo-young working in the Academic Affairs Support Team within the school administration.

Q. Is the 2021 class registration operation a temporary method of operation, expecting to lead to online classes in 2021?

A. No, this is a change related to the operation of the class registration regardless of the non-face-to-face situation. Our school is undergoing a major reshuffle in 2021, with the name of majors changing and colleges changing. In the process, the new and old organization, which have been reorganized, will be treated as secondary majors, and existing students will not be able to apply for classes in the new organization during the period of registering for their primary major. The school can treat the old and the new organization as the primary major. However, in this case, it has to tie up all majors, so the meaning of the primary major becomes unclear. Such a large-scale reorganization will make it impossible to distinguish between primary majors and secondary majors, and the restriction will be made by dividing the class registration period. There is one more reason why the school can integrate the class registration period. Our school class registration system has been sharing servers with KUTIS, Barun System, and LMS. In order to minimize errors in class registration, the school has divided the period of class registration into primary major, engineering certification, and secondary majors and made efforts through registering batch within the wish bag. However, since the school has prepared a private use server and improved the class registration system in the second semester of 2020, it is expected that the school system will be able to fully handle all registrations on the first day even if the school operates the integrated class registration period. There were some students who agreed to eliminate the distinction between primary major and secondary major, but there were also concerns about the lack of seats for students studying for the primary major.

Q. What do you think about this?

A. In the meantime, the purpose of dividing the period of primary major and secondary major was to distribute limited registration in addition to protecting the priority of primary major students. The improvement of the class registration system solved the problem of overload, but I fully agree with the concerns of the students. However, other schools are also applying for integrated class registration regardless of primary or secondary major. The reason is that it is impossible to distinguish from primary major by reorganization undergoing the first and second cycle of analysis by the Ministry of Education, and that prioritizing for registering primary major classes violates the policy to encourage many majors. The school will try to resolve the students’ right to learn through the expansion of the number of students taking classes and additional classifications.

As the situation changes over time, the operation of class registration will inevitably move in a new direction to fill the gaps in the existing system. In the process, we way experience a smooth transition or friction that interferes with the exercise of the educational environment. The survey for students conducted before the implementation showed positive responses to the system in 2021, so we expect to see a change in the class registration system. The Pharos is not sure what the 2021 operation will bring about later, but the Pharos hopes it will be a transition to a better class registration system.

Planning Editor•KIM JIN•coo0714@naver.com