A change has hit Fresno State with class schedules only being available online. But the shift to the electronic world hasn’t seemed to leave many negative feelings.

“The students haven’t complained about the class schedule only being accessible online,” Registrar Tina Beddall said.

This year the spring 2011 class schedule was no longer available as a print copy in the Kennel Bookstore. Students have not addressed any complaints to the bookstore or the registrar’s office about the transition. Kennel Bookstore director of 10 years, Ron Durham, says it’s not a problem so far.

“No one has come up to us and complained,” Durham said. “There are always going to be people that struggle with change, but so far everything has been running smooth.”

He and associated director Jack Gartner also say the change is for the better.

“[It] has taken all the sales for the class schedules, but I think the fact of the matter is that students are lot more Internet savvy and the new way of registering is more up to date and user friendly,” Gartner said.

That is not to say that there haven’t been a few confused students from the change.

“I’ve seen a few students look around for it but when an employee explains it’s online they don’t seem mad,” Durham said. “In fact the student employees tell them where to find it and how to do it.”
Some students express their positive feedback for the change.

“When I was at Reedley Community College, I never used the print version of class schedules,” Leighanna Mixter, a double major in political science and linguistics, said.

“One problem I had with the print version was that the courses would be outdated and some classes would be dropped and I wouldn’t be able to register,” Devon Lowe a mathematics major, said.
Beddall believes this is another benefit of the transition to the Internet.

“Before the class schedules were printed the class scheduling is planned three months in advance, so by the time the print copy is printed it will have been outdated by four months,” Beddall said. “Now that the class schedule is done online students will have it constantly up to date so they don’t have to worry about classes being dropped.”

Some students speculated that the transition to online-only schedules was because of Fresno State’s commitment to going green.

“I imagine the process to print copies to sell is costly and money is tight at the collegiate level,” Mixter said. “So why not go green and save some money in the process.”

But Beddall explains that going green was an added benefit to the user-friendly transition.

“I asked around if students use the print version, and nine times out of ten they said no and that they preferred registering online,” Beddall said.

Beddall thinks that this meant that the move to the Internet was the best option for students and that they are open to students and encourage them to contribute to the process.

“We actually take suggestions from students about how we can make the process easier and we implement a lot of those changes especially the good ones,” Beddall said. “One thing we have thought about is adding a keyword search to make it based on hits to help students find things quicker, but we haven’t done it yet.”

Some students think this would be a good start to making registration even easier.

“Adding changes like a keyword search engine that goes by hits to narrow down searches would be less tedious and annoying,” Mixter said.