Instead of waiting in a line stretching from the Canfield Administration Building to Andrews Hall, UNL students have changed their classes this first week of school by gluing their ears to a telephone.
Although punching in numbers to access NRoll, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's telephone registration system, may seem time-consuming, current UNL students can drop or add classes in minutes, unlike previous UNL registration systems.
"If you were interested in getting any of the classes you wanted, you would get up really early and stand in line with a bunch of people," John Frese, a 1995 UNL graduate, said. "It was a circus."
From 1982 to 1994, students had to stand in line for a time appointment card to change their schedule during the first week of classes. Canfield Administration Building opened at about 7:30 a.m.
"The people who were really motivated would stand in line at 6:30 (a.m.)," Frese said. "I was never that motivated."
When Frese received his appointment card after standing in line, he would go to the Nebraska Union and fill out a bubble sheet of the courses he wanted to add or drop. A computer would assign him to an open section. He kept filling out bubble sheets until he got the classes he needed.
"You could get in and out of there in about one or two hours," he said. "But it could sometimes take half a day or more if you had really bad luck."
Frese said he always got into the classes he needed using the bubble cards.
Before Frese came to UNL, students used IBM punch cards. From the early 1960s to 1982, students would put punch-patterned cards into a machine programmed to read the cards, said Bob Reid, associate director of Registration and Records.
The old registration systems did help students graduate on time because students were more likely to seek advice on classes, Gerry Brookes, professor of English, said. Brookes scheduled English classes for 11 years when he was the vice chairman of the English department.
Students can now decide to drop an 8:30 a.m. class using NRoll if they are in bed at 8 a.m. and don't want to go to class. They also are more likely to ask friends what classes to take instead of asking their advisers.
Other colleges using telephone registration have similar results, Brookes said.
UNL also updated registration in 1996 by putting the schedule of about 7,000 class sections on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Web site, said Earl Hawkey, director of Registration and Records. The university also plans to develop online registration. "We haven't really set up a schedule, but we are planning on working on it this year," Hawkey said.
Registration has progressed from hole-punched cards, to bubble sheets, to telephones and, in the future, to the Web, but most UNL students have known only NRoll.
"Unfortunately, most of the students who used the old system aren't here to appreciate (NRoll)," Hawkey said.
However, Frese, who used NRoll his last year of college, said he had wondered where the bubble sheets were.
"I kind of missed the old system at first," he said.
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Updated: Saturday, November 29, 2008Is this the equivalent of resurrecting a zombie post on a message board?