Enrolling through OU’s new enrollment system sucks.
It’s complicated, aesthetically nauseating and it doesn’t offer students flexibility in planning their spring schedules.
This is in stark contrast to the old enrollment system, which was extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate. We miss that system.
And we think we are not alone, as we have not heard one (not even one) student say he or she likes the new system.
Before the new oZONE enrollment system was unveiled, we heard nothing but good things from the oZONE team. But since its release, we have been disappointed, frustrated, upset and pissed off. The list goes on.
And this has created headaches for enrollment advisers, too.
The reason why this system was necessary is that OU’s mainframe system, which housed all student records, was built in 1968.
In computer years, it was ancient. And it needed to be updated.
We understand this. A major university like OU should not have a mainframe that is over four decades old.
oZONE was created as a solution to transfer all of this data from the old mainframe. We understand this was needed.
But we wish the changes that impacted students most, like enrollment, financial aid and e-mail, were implemented more gradually, as opposed to all in one semester.
We do not pretend to fully understand all of the technical aspects of a transition of this magnitude, and perhaps there was no better way.
But it is frustrating that those of us who attend and work at OU right now are dealing with the brunt of the negative effects of this transition, especially when one considers that this is a transition 40 years in the making.
And the worst is yet to come.
Right now, the old enrollment system is still available for students to use as a tool while planning their spring schedules. But we have been told that this system may be unavailable for fall enrollment.
So what can be done now?
Apparently improvements and trial schedules are on the way, but we have no timetable and that’s not encouraging.
We understand things aren’t going back to the way they were, but we implore those who are still working to fully implement the oZONE system to do their best to make the new system have as many of the convenient features the old system had, especially power search and trial schedules.
This is only fair to us, those who are not seeing any real benefits from the new system, but who are all too familiar with the system’s problems.
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I'm a grad student and when I tried to enroll last Friday morning when my window opened, both sections of a class I needed were already FULL somehow. I called my department's office and turns out the classes weren't actually full- Ozone fake-filled them up! I had to keep checking back and eventually it showed seats available, so I was able to enroll. I am sure there are people though who did not keep checking back, and didn't get the class they needed. I was also told by my department's office that the department itself has NO WAY of seeing who is enrolled in which classes- this information is only visible to ozone administrators. How can academic departments help their students, if they can't even see which classes they're enrolled in?
Thank you for the information in this article: it explains a mystery I had not been able to solve! I am an online instructor at OU, and normally at this point in registration period I do not get as many emails from students who want to enroll in my online classes - but this week, I have been swamped with emails from students. SWAMPED. I could not figure out why - but now, after reading this article, I think I see the reason. Using the Power Search at enroll.ou.edu, the default is "open courses only" (if you wanted to widen your search to include closed classes, you had to go in and select that option). Well, now that no actual enrollment data for Spring 2010 is going in to enroll.ou.edu, all classes are open; none are closed (even though many classes really are closed already!). That means students are finding my already-full online courses in the Power Search at enroll.ou.edu - courses that, at this point in enrollment, would no longer be included in the search results for "upper-division (Non)Western Culture Gen. Ed" if the data at enroll.ou.edu were accurate.
I feel badly for the students who are contacting me now because I probably will not be able to find room for them in my classes, although I am glad to add them to the waiting list... but at least I understand why this is so different than in semesters past: if students are using the Power Search at enroll.ou.edu for Spring 2010, they are being hurt by the fact that the search results are less useful than they used to be, now that no actual enrollment data is being updated in the enroll.ou.edu system.
So, students should be aware that using the Power Search at enroll.ou.edu for Spring 2010 will return less useful results now than in past semester, since it no longer reflects up-to-date information about which classes are open and which are closed.
One big change they could make at Ozone.ou.edu to improve the search options there is to make the department search default to "All Departments." Right now, it is very tedious and difficult to go in and highlight the whole long list of departments, especially because the menu window is so small and it takes a long time to scroll from top to bottom. When students are searching for Gen. Ed. courses they are going to do that regardless of department; in the Power Search at enroll.ou.edu that was really easy, and at the new Ozone.ou.edu search page that is so time-consuming and tricky as to be practically impossible.
Transferring the enrollment system on a modern mainframe computer has absolutely nothing to do with the user interface. Also among all System/360 or B5000 or UNIVAC mainframe computers of the late 60s that are known to exist today, virtually none are in working condition. This 40-years old computer story smells like a big lie.
As far as I know, people are mostly complaining about the (incredibly messy) organization of Ozone, and also about the questionable choice of putting weather reports and trivial news a click away from your enrollment window. I suppose this Sungard company was contracted by OU to design the Ozone user interface and sold them the WORST interface imaginable. I do not know WHO approved this, and I do not know how much money was poured in the incapable hands of Sungard, but the Enrollment Services are going to regret their investment.
Can't they just transfer the old system to ozone? The old system was great and this one is terrible. I would be fine if we had ozone w/ enroll's engine.
OUSooners,
A major part of this conversion was a database update and upgrade, which changes how data is managed and "pulled" to display dynamically on any page you want to view.
This would mean, essentially, that we would have had to convert the data, then redesign enroll from scratch, tying the new database and data streams into the new design appropriately.
We looked at doing this, but the up-front cost and risk to the project was too great. As is, we can troubleshoot issues very easily because we are using the default installation of this product. If we had made thousands customizations to the interface, troubleshooting, support, and, potentially, accuracy and reliability could have been compromised.
We plan to start updating the user interface as quickly as possible, especially the table padding in the class search result page. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until January (when pay and student services go live in oZONE) before we begin making too many updates.
The enroll portion is part of a larger suite of products purchased to build a better infrastructure and foundation for student services. The user interface will get better over time, much like enroll.ou.edu did.
dio,
You are right...the computer itself isn't 40 years old. What is 40 years old is the application infrastructure -- the operating system, coding languages, database structures, data stores, and the linkages between these things. You can see that in the fact that we had to shut the old system down every night at midnight and bring it back online at 8 am. The existing user interface was built on this aging foundation.
While you're right that the interface is not great, OU isn't the first school to make this switch. Over 1,100 Universities are using this system, including a few other schools in the state and a handful of Big 12 schools. The user interface will have to grow over time (students hated enroll.ou.edu when it first came out as well) ... unfortunately that's the nature of large ERP projects like this one. Let me know if you have any additional questions.
NickOUIT
Why couldn't the application infrastructure be upgraded to work with the enroll system? I don't think it's really necessary to have everything linked together and it seems that the blowzone has a lot of extraneous BS on it. I really don't need to see "OU on YouTube" videos and I'm pretty sure if I needed to find the library web site I could find it on the web.
@NickOUIT
I suspected that this was what you told to the OU Daily. In other words you are currently battling with dinosaurs like CMS and COBOL to manage your records, just like many other institutions. Because of soaring costs, the current system was chosen not to be upgraded and updated. Instead money was poured in to change the user interface... which actually did not need to be changed at all. Not only that operation was unnecessary, but it created new problems and resulted in an impractical interface. Looks like another case of gross mismanagement of university funds.
Was there any valid reason to make the switch to ozone other than copying other universities? Normally, you do not jump off a cliff because your neighbor is doing it.
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