Belmont identifies registration site issues

Ellucian, after extensive site testing, identified problems that caused Belmont registration sites to fail two days in a row during registration in April, and suggested changes to help registration run more smoothly this fall.

“I appreciate the patience of our student body as we work to provide the best possible registration experience to them,” said Gill.

In April, Belmont’s 36 CPUs — which should be able to handle a load of 5,000-6,000 students at any given time — faltered with just 1,000 students signed on. Belmont has worked to solve the problem since then.

In order to identify the problems, Ellucian created an exact replica of Belmont’s registration system and performed load testing to see what went wrong with the process. They found three factors that were causing problems.

Ellucian recommended Belmont modify its registration groupings, so that fewer students are trying to register at once. Belmont is currently working on reorganizing how many students register for classes at a time, with the model based on earned credit hours, said Gill.

“In the coming weeks, once the final groupings are determined, the details of this new model will be communicated to the campus community,” Gill said.

Ellucian also identified seven courses with “hot CRNs” — course registration numbers that students were entering frequently — that the database to slow down further. To fix this, the Office of the Registrar has spread classes across multiple CRNs.

Belmont also disabled a programming function that was using up processing power and slowing down servers during registration, Gill said.

Gill understands students’ frustration with the process, but she remains confident that registration will run more smoothly this fall.

“I am hopeful our shared frustration will turn to shared relief and confidence in a registration system that works — every time for every student.”