Registrar to expand E-drop service

The 8,500 E-drop requests made online last semester proved first-time success for the registrar’s new paperless service.\nThe E-drop service, which allows students to drop their classes through OneStart, was open to nearly all students last semester. The registar’s office plans to expand the service this semester to cover those previously left out, said Michael Carroll, associate registrar.\nThe service was open to every school on campus except for graduate students at the Kelley School of Business and the School of Law, Carroll said. This semester, graduate students at the business school will join the E-drop system, leaving only law school students without the service.\nA supplement to E-drop service, E-add, was only open to students in the University Division, the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and School of Music. Students in those programs could only add courses from the School of Music \nand HPER. \nThough no new schools will be added to the E-add system this semester, Carroll hopes to expand the online option to the entire campus by the end of the 2009 academic year. Cathy Gilbert, undergraduate recorder for the Kelley School of Business, said E-drop solved the early-semester problem of students lining up to lighten their \nclass load.\n“We would have students standing in line wanting to drop a class,” Gilbert said. “Students walked in to drop and were surprised to learn they could do \nit online.”\nAfter the E-drop pilot program was first initiated during the summer semesters, the registrar’s office completed a survey of student and faculty opinion. The feedback was largely positive, Carroll said.\nThe main complications for E-drop requests the registrar encountered this fall stemmed from students filing both online and paper drop requests for the same class. Carroll said students occasionally got worried that an online drop request wasn’t processed and would also file a paper request.\nCarroll said students who are concerned about the status of their E-drop request can go to the notifications tab on OneStart. At the bottom of the screen are records of all pending or completed requests, \nhe said.\nBob O’Loughlin, director of Academic Program Administration for HPER, said he only sees improvements in the online system.\n“I think it will be great when the paper forms are completely eliminated,” O’Loughlin said.