Class registration is usually a stressful experience for students, but the spring 2017 semester registration proved to be more stressful than usual for Fairfield students due to the University’s implementation of Banner XE.

According to Director of Administrative Computing for Information Technology Services Russell Battista, Banner XE includes a Plan Ahead feature that “provides a plan function that enables students to work with their advisors to map courses into a projected schedule.”

Battista added that the function enables students to create “up to five plans so they can run different scheduling scenarios. Once registration begins, the plan can be submitted in its entirety.”

However, on Nov. 11, the day of Class of 2017 registration, Banner XE experienced technical difficulties that caused the site to crash for many students.

“The timeout issues began early in the registration process, but once the heavier volume began with the senior class, the system struggled processing all the transactions at once,” Battista said.

Once ITS realized that students were getting timed out of Banner XE, they reverted back to the old registration system so that students would still be able to register during their time slots.

According to Allison Devaney ‘18, Banner XE crashed again during the Class of 2018’s registration on Nov. 15 while she was trying to register for classes.

“[I] didn’t get into the same class for the fourth time in a row because the system crashed,” Devaney said.

Junior Pamela Kask also ran into difficulties with the Banner XE system. Kask had enough credits to register as a senior but “when the new system crashed, the old one rebooted and forced [her] to register as a junior.”

“I’m currently not in some important classes I need and I could have been in them if the system had allowed me to register on Friday like I was supposed to,” Kask added.

Senior Kaitlyn Cocuzzo was excited to be able to register in the earliest time slot for the first time, but still found herself running into issues with registration due to the Banner XE system.

When the time came for me to register, the website crashed and I was unable to register for my course,” Cocuzzo said. “I waited in the Kelley Center with about 50 of my peers for the website to come back up, causing me to be 25 minutes late to class, only to register with the old system.”

According to Battista, ITS has monitored each registration session to determine what’s causing the timeout issues that students experienced. Additionally, ITS is in contact with its vendor, Ellucian, to resolve the glitches. However, at the moment, ITS does not know the root of the timeout issues.

Battista added that the Registrar’s office will continue to update students via email about the status of Banner XE and ITS will keep both the new and old registration systems open so that registration can take place as scheduled for the sophomore and freshman classes.

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