Oncourse, OneStart updated

IU has made major renovations on Oncourse and OneStart, improving the user interface as well as increasing the program’s functionality and the amount of available applications. The upgrades took place between Feb. 15 and Feb. 21.\nThe IU faculty has had the opportunity to use the new Oncourse CL for the last three years, said Anastasia Morrone, associate dean for Learning Technologies and associate professor at the IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis School of Education. Faculty members were given the option of either using the old or new version in order to ease the transition.\nThis caused many problems as some teachers used the old version and some used the new, confusing some students along the way. However, now that IU has made the transition to the new Oncourse, IU faculty reported liking the grading, resource and assignments sections, Morrone said. The resources section of Oncourse now holds up to 1 gigabyte of information.\nDespite the update, the new Oncourse CL had a couple \nof issues.\nThe most critical occurred during the beginning of the fall 2007 semester, Morrone said. Oncourse’s managing software was causing the system to run very slowly. However, UITS was able to fix the problem quickly.\n“We were able to trouble-shoot that problem in about 36 hours,” Morrone said.\nMost of the suggestions and complaints received from the students are about increasing functionality and reducing time spent on the applications themselves.\n“One way to make (Oncourse) more user-friendly is by making navigation from page to page easier,” freshman Justin Shukas said.\nFreshmen Aimee Light and Nick Ready both commented on the speed of Oncourse. They said that sometimes the loading process can take a while.\n“Sometimes, applications don’t show up at first,” Light said. She added that the pages eventually come up, but it’s a hassle waiting and it can be stressful, especially when you have an assignment or a project due. \nFreshman Robert Avera said he’s had the most trouble with the assignments application.\n“It’s hard to submit homework off of campus and sometimes it is difficult to download material – kind of important when you need it for a project,” Avera said.\nOncourse tools such as the time out alert, site import, assignments and chats have been updated, replaced or added during the past two major Oncourse CL renovations, Morrone said.\n“(With) logging in, there has definitely been numerous occasions of waiting three to four minutes for the (Oncourse) home screen to pop up,” said freshman Kevin Kearney. Kearney also said the assignments tool can get confusing with all the clicking that has to be done in order to submit an assignment.\nAlong with Oncourse, OneStart got a makeover, as well. PeopleSoft, the information system IU uses, was upgraded from the 8.0 version to the 9.0 version. The upgrade improved OneStart’s user functionality and interface. In the area of self-service, a new interface will better organize the available services and make it easier for students to find the information they need, Barry Walsh, the IU vice president for enterprise software, said in an e-mail interview. There were two changes to support this; first, there is a new student default page for students in the Onestart Services tab that provides a summary of the students’ information including their class schedule, bursar and financial aid summaries, to-do’s or hold on their records, Walsh said in an e-mail.\n“It’s confusing to adapt to the new interface in the middle of the year,” Shukas said. \nWalsh said many IU offices across the campus were involved in putting the upgrade together. He said student responses have generally been positive and that most complaints come from students who do not like that the Web site was “rearranged” and many applications were moved around.\nWalsh added that the transition to the new system went well, especially given how large it was.\n“This took several years to complete because you can’t make those kind of major changes overnight,” he said. “We made significant customization, and we wanted to make sure that the two versions were interconnected.”