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November 9, 2006
Preregistration
Ah, the joys of advisement time, that happy, happy season of appointment after appointment!
Our stranglehold to force students to see their assigned advisor is to distribute the PIN numbers needed for online registration to the advisors. I have only two PIN numbers left on my desk. Two miscreants have never responded to my emails offering appointment time sign-up lists. Both of them are sophomores, and I expect them to contact me today. You see, sophomores may begin registering tomorrow morning. Last semester's PIN number won't work.
Sadly for them, my dog has a vet appointment this afternoon. I will not be available for appointments. This has been announced on the emails. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth during this learning experience.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at November 9, 2006 7:26 AM
Comments
Well, the alternative - where I teach - is to require little if any input from faculty on what classes students take. And then somehow you wind up with students who got admitted to classes they lacked the prerequisites for (and so, they do poorly, and complain about the prof), or who are seniors taking freshman-level classes they skipped because they heard they were "boring" and they somehow thought the requirement to take that class would magically go away before it was time for them to graduate. Stuff like that.
I dunno. I tend to come down on the side of "they're adults, let's treat them like adults" but I've also had several of the prerequisite-dodgers in my class this semester and it's kind of a horror. So I guess I am saying now that I'm more in favor of having someone in the department where the student who is majoring - someone who knows what they're doing - tell the kids "you WILL take this class this semester" or somesuch.
Posted by: ricki at November 9, 2006 9:26 AM
Heh. You remind me that I need to send an e-mail to my own miscreants for the same reason! One of them is one of those kids I wouldn't be able to pick out of a lineup, he's avoided me so completely.
Posted by: New Kid on the Hallway at November 9, 2006 9:47 AM
At my institution, it is staff members and graduate students who deal with all the miscreants. Faculty are far too busy with their research to learn the ins and outs of our several overlapping sets of requirements...and actually having appointments with students would of course be out of the question.
The good part, though, is that fairly low-level people like myself wind up having a surprising amount of influence over curriculum, since so many of the professors have so little understanding of it.
Posted by: Blog Goliard at November 9, 2006 1:25 PM
Our online registration system detects whether or not a student a necessary prerequisite for a course, and doesn't let the student sign up for it unless someone from the relevant department gives a clearance.
My previous school had the "get your number from your advisor" system, and it was an annoyance to me (a student) because my advisor never had anything to say that I couldn't have figured out myself from the catalog, and he was difficult to track down--he never posted his office hours and didn't respond to requests for appointments. It's good to know that most professors are more responsible.
.....We have a prerequisite catcher, too, but its effectiveness depends on whether a professor has set prereqs carefully enough. For instance, I'm teaching a 300-level Roman art course. What I really want is for classics and history majors who've never had an art history course to be able to register for it without pestering me for permission, so there are about 5 alternate prereqs. The registrar hates me now, but it seems to have worked. --MCT
Posted by: JaneC at November 10, 2006 3:16 AM