Colleagues pay tribute to retiring Executive Dean
Government funding recognises UNE’s achievementsStudents enrol online at UNE
December 15, 2006
Paper-based enrolment may soon be a thing of the past at the University of New England, following successful trials of online enrolment in 2006.
In November, more than 2000 continuing internal students re-enrolled for 2007 via the university’s student Web portal. This followed a successful trial of online enrolment with 300 students in early 2006.
Assistant Registrar Trevor Edgar said that by 2008 he expected all students would be using online services, including completing their enrolment online.
Enrolling online generally took just 5-10 minutes and could be completed from anywhere in the world, Mr Edgar said.
The new process meant considerable savings in paper and administration, he said.
Daniel Gooch, who supervised the Web portal’s development, said online enrolment had been very well received by students who participated in the trials, some of whom offered their opinions in focus groups.
“We have actually had students from outside the trial groups who, for a variety of reasons, have requested to do their enrolment online,” he said.
“We let them into the trial because they were so keen to be a part of it.”
Online enrolment was about more than just reducing administrative overheads, Mr Gooch said. Today’s technologically-savvy students expected to be able to interact with their university online.
“They use the Web to do their shopping, stay in touch with their friends and manage their bank accounts. It seems a bit incongruous when they receive a big stack of paper forms to enrol in a course that they’re probably going to do online.”
Mr Gooch said enrolment was one of many services the university was now offering online through its student Web portal. He said by logging on once with their username and password, students could access their email, change their mailing details and check their results.
UNE was also looking at introducing an SMS service to notify students of their results as soon as they became available, he said.
Posted by Leon Braun at December 15, 2006 01:06 PM