UCD Registration=Useless

GuffFromSwine

I am writing this post to register my utter disgust at the sheer perversity and backwardness of the elective registration system currently employed by UCD. It appears in the name of 'modernising'and 'streamlining' the registration process, any human element has been sacraficed in order to present the image of UCD as a modern university offering the latest technological innovations to its students. I would like to point out in the strongest possible terms that this representation is only skin deep.
I fail to see the point in allowing people to oversubscribe to elective modules prior to offering them on a 'first come first served' basis. This creates a desperate scramble for places among students who were unfortunate enough not to be randomly allocated a place in their chosen elective. For most popular courses, this means that at least half the people provisionally registered will be forced to find a different course which fits in with their lecture timetable. As this process essentialy becomes a race, the student's course preferance inevitably takes a back seat. Basically, a student may as well resign themselves to the fact that searching for a course which seems interesting or useful becomes an exercise in futility as there is a more than fair chance that they will be randomly jettissoned from said module should it prove a popular choice with his/her fellow students. To compound their difficulties, the myopic automated system employed by UCD does not allow students to register for more than sixty credits. If they were allowed to do so, they could register to several electives and drop out of them should they be offered a place in one of their preferred choices. If such a choice were available, a student could make a calm, rational choice concerning their 'fall-back' options instead of frantically trawling the (slow) UCD website for an alternative. The cherry on top of this particularly bitter cake is that UCD, in their infinite wisdom, decided to start this pointless race at 10.30 on a saturday night. The idiocy of this decision does the academic and intellectual standing of UCD a grave injustice.
I am currently entering my final year in UCD. Although my undergraduate years have been without doubt a positive experience overall, academically they have been marred by the clumsy and lumbering modularisation system imposed by the college authorities. Every year there are huge lines stretching from the admin building and various programme offices. Every year people are sent from the admin to troop around the place only to be sent back to admin. When I was in first year, I had tutors who didn't know what marking system was being used two months into term. In my opinion, the cause of this unhappy situation is UCD's blind attempts to scale the international university rankings. It is high time somebody in a position of power recognised the damage this is doing to UCD, not only in terms of how it facilitates it's student body, but in terms of the negative effect it is having on the very charachter of the college. Due to increased work load, participation in socities and extra-curricular activities has plummeted. Even the vastly populist Commerce and Economics is having trouble living up to its image of itself in terms of numbers and participation. UCD is becoming a grey and souless degree factory, as opposed to a place where lifelong friendships are made and lifelong learning is encouraged. I for one wish to decry this process before it comes full circle and we become nothing but a producer of highly educated morons, hacks.

smallthing

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm goin into my 3rd year in UCD and am once again baffled to find that i am once again searching for an elective 2 days before term starts and am struggling to find anything that fits in with my timetable and am interested in. After origionally registering for electives and then being told they're full.... I mean what is the point??? When we're told there's n amount of places you'd expect to be accepted... it's all a load of bull crap. Plus i was unable to register for any modules until last week because one of my modules from last year wesn't on my SISweb account and so it said I hadn't completed 2st year.... All this modernisation is causing UCD to become run by inefficient computer systems which aren't regulated properly and which make life harder for every one of the college's students. Making friends and finding time for a social life aswell as to study is hard enough without having to chase stupid mistakes made by the unicersity's "system". It's like they dont care about the students and are only interested in the college's development while ignoring it's inhabitant's without whom the college wouldn't exist.... I have had a fantastic 2 years in college and will continue to enjoy student life!! But I have to admit that the college has had very little to do with this..... and the only thing that's made my student years so far what they are my fellow students and myself!

stopyourshoppin

i agree also. and relying on email to inform us of our failure to get our chosen subjects is ludicrous - i am simply not able to check often enough and it is now, the day before i return to college, that i discover that i have not got into either of my elective modules, when there is nothing else i want to choose, and that all of a sudden there are no spaces for a module in my core subject that appeared as confirmed only a day ago. one of my modules has no tutorial that does not clash with other subjects so i am simply not allowed to take this module. basically i am not studying anything i actually want to. UCD is disgraceful, i won't see a human face until i have queued for god knows how long at the student desk or the arts desk. i have decided i don't care. i will wait till the second week when the queues lessen and i will sort it out so that i am allocated spaces for what i am paying fees for. thank god education here is 'free' seeing as the fees i did have to pay were astronomical. i really don't know what we get in return for them. i am thinking of lodging a complaint about the registration system.

Raphael

If they made the elective registration first come first served, it puts courses whose registration opens earlier at an advantage, as they can get in earlier. And it also completely shafts first years, as by the time they get a chance to register, everyone else in the college has done so and first year electives that interested them are gone.

The only way to change this would be to open registration for everyone at the same time which, imo, is a criminally bad idea, as with every UCD student descending on the server at the same time, it would explode.

While your suggestion of allowing multiple sign ups does have merit, there is the situation wher a student signs up for 5, and gets offered all of them, subsequently dropping the others. However people who were trying for those other places don;t get them, as the module is then first come first served, and someone completely different is just as likely to waltz in and take the spot he left open.

Pythia

Agh, paragraphs, please OP.
So difficult to read, I gave up.

breadmonkey

Pythia wrote:

Agh, paragraphs, please OP.
So difficult to read, I gave up.

I thought I was the only one.

Rosita

GuffFromSwine wrote:

When I was in first year, I had tutors who didn't know what marking system was being used two months into term.

I have now completed my time in UCD but while I wouldn't disagree with any of your post this part particularly mirrors my own experience.

I know that last year two months into the English course the tutors were not even sure how many exam papers there would be never mind the minutia of the marking schemes.

I had to do an oral exam in Irish and was under the impression that the second oral exam was worth 20%. When I went in I saw 100 marks (10% of the overall) written on the assessment sheet they had fill out and questioned this wondering if it was just a bog standard sheet which had the wrong marks written down or if there were indeed lower marks than I had been originally thinking. I was assured by the examiners that there was only 100 marks going for that part of the course. Yet when I received my marks it had been marked from 200 and not 100 as the examiners said.

Generally while I enjoyed my courses, my primary criticism of UCD would come down to poor communication. Even down to a small thing like where to congregate for the first class of the year etc. which is something that has evening students at sixes and sevens. Poor communication between the college and the students and poor communications within the college. That's not to even deal with the appalling and unnecessary delays in processing exam results. I finished my exams on May 31 and did not receive my results by post until mid-August. Obviously I had got them by other means at that stage but that was the best the official UCD method could do.

GuffFromSwine

Raphael wrote:

The only way to change this would be to open registration for everyone at the same time which, imo, is a criminally bad idea, as with every UCD student descending on the server at the same time, it would explode.

I'm sure your right about the server exploding, but surely this is evidence that the current system in UCD doesn't lend itself to rational or fair use? IE over-automation has made such use impossible? With regard to your point about some random punter swooping in to take an elective place, I reckon that could be tackled if they employed a further 'first come first serve option' wherein students would be offered their alternatives in the order in which they applied for it. Either way, I'm getting a bit theoretical here. Other universities employ a modularisation system and as far as I know, outside of teething problems in the first year, they don't have the issues we seem to do. I'd be interested to hear what systems they employ. I may be wrong but I think DCU is modularised?

EDIT:Whats OP lads? I don't come on here that often.

Raphael

Original Post or Original Poster. And a server crashing if every student in UCD tries to get onto it at the same time isn't evidence of anything. It's a lot of people, and servers can only handle a certain amount of pressure.

pretty*monster

Who else remembers the good old days in which in order to register first years formed a line that snaked around the whole Tierney Building and spent the best part of the day in that line.

The uphort was that to the best of my recolection registering for 'modules', or classes as we so quaintly refered to them, mostly just involved showing up.

TelePaul

Are you guys freshers or some such? This is good ol UCD efficiency! My thrid year, was notified yesterday I didn't get my semester one elective but I can't choose a new one until Tuesday - at which point term will have begun and any elective I'd be interested in which takes place on a Tuesday will have started without me. I also think the 'random' allocation isn't very random at all.

fatal

same **** different year

GuffFromSwine

fatal wrote:

same **** different year

TelePaul wrote:

Are you guys freshers or some such? This is good ol UCD efficiency! My thrid year, was notified yesterday I didn't get my semester one elective but I can't choose a new one until Tuesday - at which point term will have begun and any elective I'd be interested in which takes place on a Tuesday will have started without me. I also think the 'random' allocation isn't very random at all.

pretty*monster wrote:

Who else remembers the good old days in which in order to register first years formed a line that snaked around the whole Tierney Building and spent the best part of the day in that line.

The uphort was that to the best of my recolection registering for 'modules', or classes as we so quaintly refered to them, mostly just involved showing up.

No offense, but enough of these tired, patriarchal quotes essentialy saying 'we had the same in our day but we learned to deal with it'.This bo*lox registration malarky needs to be seriously addressed. It's only getting worse and if we're so hopeless about trying to engage with it what chance do we as students have at all?

Esmereldina

TelePaul wrote:

Are you guys freshers or some such? This is good ol UCD efficiency! My thrid year, was notified yesterday I didn't get my semester one elective but I can't choose a new one until Tuesday - at which point term will have begun and any elective I'd be interested in which takes place on a Tuesday will have started without me. I also think the 'random' allocation isn't very random at all.

Just turn up to whatever classes you want to take anyway... and sort out the bit where you actually 'register' for them later.

Het-Field

pretty*monster wrote:

Who else remembers the good old days in which in order to register first years formed a line that snaked around the whole Tierney Building and spent the best part of the day in that line.

The uphort was that to the best of my recolection registering for 'modules', or classes as we so quaintly refered to them, mostly just involved showing up.

Those were the days !

Dave!

hmmm... I've registered for all my modules, but just checking now and at the end, on the electives page, it says for both of my electives:

"No labs / tutorials necessary for this module."

Yet along the side of the page it has the following:

"Registration Status
- Core / Options completed. (in green)
- Electives completed. (in green)
- Labs/Tutorials still required. (in RED)"

I don't see how to register for tutorials.....

Esmereldina

DaveMcG wrote:

hmmm... I've registered for all my modules, but just checking now and at the end, on the electives page, it says for both of my electives:

"No labs / tutorials necessary for this module."

Yet along the side of the page it has the following:

"Registration Status
- Core / Options completed. (in green)
- Electives completed. (in green)
- Labs/Tutorials still required. (in RED)"

I don't see how to register for tutorials.....

Sometimes the system will give error messages like that even if you have registered properly for everything. So, if you're sure you don't need to register for any tutorials for the module, then I'd say it's fine. You should probably check with school or programme office to be sure though.

Dave!

Cheers. I dont seem to have any tutorials for any subjects...

I'm in stage 2. Are there no tutorials for me? Here's what I've got (besides lectures!), maybe someone can tell me if they think it looks alright... If something's awry, I'll ring UCD up.

Data Structures and Algorithms I - practical
Web Multimedia: an overview - lab
Databases and Info Systems I - practical

Renaissance to Enlightenment - seminar
West and Middle East 1919-73 - seminar

Northern Ireland - (nothing)


Should I gather that in stage 2 tutorials for arts subjects are replaced by 2 seminars per semester?

Cheers

stopyourshoppin

DaveMcG wrote:

hmmm... I've registered for all my modules, but just checking now and at the end, on the electives page, it says for both of my electives:

"No labs / tutorials necessary for this module."

Yet along the side of the page it has the following:

"Registration Status
- Core / Options completed. (in green)
- Electives completed. (in green)
- Labs/Tutorials still required. (in RED)"

I don't see how to register for tutorials.....

I have similar problems and i had the same last year. i don't know whether you are in first year or not? the ridiculous thing is that if you think you can't do the module you might cancel it and pick something you don't want, then it turns out you could have done it all along. what i am doing, judging by how things worked last year, is just doing my best with online registration, forgetting about tutorials that clash or say Error, and then sorting that out at the program office when i've been going to lectures for a week or two. they can't really refuse a place in a tutorial when you've been attending the class! i know people who hadn't signed up for the tutorials up to a month into the semester. my calendar and blackboard page say i am registered for classes, while the registration section said there were no places. so if they can't be clear about it, it's not my problem. as far as i am concerned, my timetable and blackboard page have confirmed my places and you can sort the rest out as you go. hope that helps a little. sorry i babbled but i'm so irritated with that pile of rubbish system.

pretty*monster

GuffFromSwine wrote:

No offense, but enough of these tired, patriarchal quotes essentialy saying 'we had the same in our day but we learned to deal with it'.This bo*lox registration malarky needs to be seriously addressed. It's only getting worse and if we're so hopeless about trying to engage with it what chance do we as students have at all?

Sorry, after three years raging against the machine I have accepted defeat, become a post-grad, and stopped caring. UCD has gone down the wrong path and the students are as much to blame as the authorities.

TelePaul

GuffFromSwine wrote:

No offense, but enough of these tired, patriarchal quotes essentialy saying 'we had the same in our day but we learned to deal with it'.This bo*lox registration malarky needs to be seriously addressed. It's only getting worse and if we're so hopeless about trying to engage with it what chance do we as students have at all?

What are ya gonna do, storm the admin building with dynamite taped to your shirt and take the registrar hostage? C'mon, nobody is gonna do jack **** about it except moan and whinge over a pint in the bar. The guys looking for votes as student welfare officer and SU rep will make a big deal about it and make it their numero uno policy to put-right. And then THEY wont do jack **** about it.

There's nothing to be done really....it helps if your program officer is on the ball, they can be very helpful people.....though if you go in and tell them 'This bo*lox registration malarky needs to be seriously addressed' they'll probably point to the door. I know it's a pain mate but you're not the only one, take solace in that.

TelePaul

pretty*monster wrote:

Sorry, after three years raging against the machine I have accepted defeat, become a post-grad, and stopped caring. UCD has gone down the wrong path and the students are as much to blame as the authorities.

Disagree with you there I'm afraid. People tend to write off the benefits of modularisation, and anyone thinking of doing a post grad elsewhere will be glad of a GPA when the time comes - I know people who've lost out considerably because a first, impressive as it is, equates to a min of 70%. Harvard Business School don't take you in with 70%.

Similarly, if you're going for a scholarship; in a single major subject - say, mode one history - you're immediately put in second place to someone who did a double major - say history and psychology because the old system doesn't equate subject hours or take into the account that both students took the same amount of classes.

As for the students being to blame....again, what would you have them do? Take hostages? There was a vote on modularisation and the impact it'd have if applied to students who were mid-way through their degrees. The vote was overwhelmingly against it but it gets steam-rolled through anyway.

stereoroid

1st year, and I'm in the position of having all my tutorials & practicals listed and sorted for Semester 2, but my calendar shows only Lectures in Semester 1. What I'm finding out is that it's not an admin problem: it's the lecturers and course (not programme) directors, who haven't got their act together, and they're not using the registration system.

Example: I have my first MEEN10030 lecture today, but I have the notes from Blackboard: there's a lab schedule laid out there, which we'll likely select in the old way - pen & paper. :rolleyes:

Dave!

When youre on your calendar page, there's 2 buttons in the top left of the page... You can switch between semester 1 and semester 2 there.

Ernie Ball

TelePaul wrote:

Disagree with you there I'm afraid. People tend to write off the benefits of modularisation, and anyone thinking of doing a post grad elsewhere will be glad of a GPA when the time comes - I know people who've lost out considerably because a first, impressive as it is, equates to a min of 70%. Harvard Business School don't take you in with 70%.

And I've got news for you: The GPA system used in the US is different from that used at UCD (which is unique in the world, as far as I know). It'll still need to be translated for and explained to Harvard Business School.

This has nothing to do with modularisation, mind. They could have implemented the new grading system on its own, if that was what was required.

stereoroid

DaveMcG wrote:

When youre on your calendar page, there's 2 buttons in the top left of the page... You can switch between semester 1 and semester 2 there.

Who was that addressed to? If it was me... why? I obviously know that, that's how I can see that Semester 2 has all the labs & practicals, and Semester 1 does not.

Stepherunie

Curse this modularisation, managed to go three years not being properly affected by it and now they go a break everything in my final year.

My lecturers were told by the people running blackboard that they 'Fourth Radiography' course for blackboard where the lecturers previously put all our notes was being deleted so not to upload anything to it.

So obviously enough they put all the notes in the respective modules. Except the people running blackboard register all the students for 'Fourth Radiography' not the individual modules. Cue us having no bloody access to any of our notes and no idea when it'll get sorted.

TelePaul

Ernie Ball wrote:

And I've got news for you: The GPA system used in the US is different from that used at UCD (which is unique in the world, as far as I know). It'll still need to be translated for and explained to Harvard Business School.

This has nothing to do with modularisation, mind. They could have implemented the new grading system on its own, if that was what was required.

The very modularisation system was adopted from the US so naturally they'll have a handle on it; it's focused not only on a GPA (flawed as that may be, though I consider it an improvement). It's focused on standardising what your hours worked are equal to...I mean under the old system, if you're doing maths or economics or something that can be empirically graded you could, theoretically, graduate with 100% in a maths major. But if you're doing English, you wont get higher than 80%.

Let's be honest, would you fancy trying to explain to a prestigious international school that you worked your ass off for 70%? And that that is ACTUALLY a very high mark (though of course you can't equivocate it to an exact mark). Or you could just tell them your score is out of a maximum of 4.2...