Way before I graduated to become an instructor, the University of the Philippines Los Banos (UPLB) already has started its efforts to computerize some parts of our academics-related process, including but not limited to enrollment.
Way back 1997 when I was still a freshman, the university implemented paper-based pre-enlistment which happened during the third quarter or so of a semester and the REGIST. The paper-based preenlistment involved sending the student’s printed ‘checklist’ and have the student check from the subjects list what to take the next semester. the student submits the paper back for processing and then students will wait for the confirmation which of the subjects were given thim/her.
From my interactions with Office of the Registrar employees and Dr. Ricolindo Carino himself [ he was one of my professors ], I gathered the manual process of assigning subjects to incoming freshman and the enlistment process itself took too long to be desired. The assigning (by block) of subjects to students for example required the use of a large enough blackboard and a patient enough employee to get the best possible block schedule of all incoming freshmen by trying combinations of different subjects and sections of those subjects. The enlistment stories of the time involved students lining up at the enlistment area the night before the scheduled enlistment dates praying that tomorrow there will be slots for them to take. While the enlistment activities of students were tedious, the experience became too memorable that it became one of the “Remember the time…” stories of former students. This was one of the motivations for REGIST, or our computer-based solution to our enlistment concerns.
I t is no surprise that after years of experiencing such tedious activities that people handling them begin to look for better ways to execute them and make everyones’ lives easier especially that new possibilities of handling them are now in reach. I believe its human nature to look for improvement.
With REGIST, given “good” data, students are now automatically enlisted to subjects with good-standing students and graduating students prioritized first. When you get back to the university from your vacation, REGIST already determined what courses you will take according to the previous subjects you already passed and your plan of study. It is able to predict subject demand for the coming semester also, which is used as a guide by the different departments on developing their course offerings for the next semester.
Change always has its costs however and one of the supposed cost was the so called student’s “academic freedom” to choose their own schedule. The only way to change what the REGIST assigned to you was to get a Form 26, go to the respective departments to check if there are still slots available and then enlist or cancel subjects. Some students at the time thought CompuReg (the term then) was a bad idea and organized protest rallies/actions against it. Friends from the OUR and Dr. Carino later regales the times when as they say in Tagalog “kulang na lang kaming batuhin ng kamatis” when they meet students on the way to work.
In my young and somewhat biased opinion then, as was most of BSCS students, CompuReg was a great idea as it will save as the trouble of competing for slots. I fully did not understand what “Academic Freedom” was back then. People used the term so lightly that any freedom associated to academic freedom including but not limited to not attending classes were forms of “Academic Freedom”. I am not aware of any document discussing what the “Academic Freedoms” of students are, later as instructor, I get to read the “Academic Freedom” of instructors regarding the best way to teach a course.
Some protesters were, for the lack of a better term, rabid back then. Looking back though, UP students back then protested on so many things including tuition fee increase, dorm fee increase, UP budget cuts, oil price hike and the like. I must say, Students in protest rallies back then were more “passionate” compared to what you see now (personal opinion). Almost 10 years of observing protest movements inside the university however, I must say that people protesting most of the times are trying complain and trying to stop the ripples in the water when they should be trying to stop the throwing of the stones in the water. For example, people are protesting about tuition fee increase and portray for example the chief administrators of UP as opressors, and then there’s this belief of mine that UP people are intelligent enough to derive that IF the government increase UP’s budget instead of constantly shaving it, we wouldn’t need a TFI. I believe UP people are intelligent enough that TFI is an effect and it doesn’t seem right to stop it (Not that I want TFI because I don’t even if I am not paying for my tuition fee, it’s just to me its an unavoidable effect). Another case of barking at the wrong tree. At one time, students were going out to protest about something, it was about the Americans if I remember right. The supposed protesters got into an altercation with some teachers and heads at PhySci for locking up the buildings (the employees where going to their offices). Some students somewhat angrily insisted that locking up the buildings were their symbol of protest against the Americans (I believe it was the VFA), just so also students can go out with them to protest. It didn’t seem to bother them of their addled sense of using symbols, I mean I could have countered back then, go burn their flag for crying out loud not lock buildings where taxpayers who pay for your priveleges go to work! But I digress.
I am not implying here that the protests on CompuReg is the same as that of the protests against TFI. Its just that for me the protests against CompuReg were “misguided” (can’t seem to get a better description). CompuReg, in terms of “progress” was the logical next step. The OUR reports almost 60-70% of students no longer need to modify (REALLY NEED TO MODIFY) their pre-assigned slots, thereby reducing the long lines and the time requirements for registration as opposed to everybody starting from zero and competing for our so meager resources. The amount of data being processed required, the time and the cost it took should be enough motivation for us as an organization that maintains and processes information to get more organized and more efficient in our handling of information. The only mistake the implementors did at that time, in my own opinion,was not involve students as we are trying to do now (explanation on this in another entry later) and perhaps to some extent did not inform students when they would have liked to be informed of their intentions. I cannot blame them though for both points mentioned, involvement of a lot of people required management and synchronization AND on the “inform” issue, its still the same as now, “some” students do not read announcements, “some” do not attend talks about the new thing, “some” are naturally uncooperative, “some” are apathetic of the problems and the solutions we are eager to try out, and lastly, those who should be involved seem to be busy fighting other battles where nothing ever really happens. I’d like to hear students from that era though to say CompuReg was, and still is, a bad idea and point out why.
The main point of this article being, there are things in our university that we are trying to improve, problems that need to be addressed, solutions that need to be implemented to see if they work in reality as they do in theory. I believe, that for anything to go somewhat smoothly, everyone should either understand the problem and the proposed solution OR get involved in the proposing and implementing of solutions. Then again, making people try to understand is costly, requires some level of patience and is basically a hard thing to do (but must need to be done).
More stuff later.
