Registration in AUC

Registrationin AUC Module 1 Mini Project: Creative Thinking and problem solving

Roles: THE Producers Developers / Writers Sandra Anton Hadiel Zakaria • Mina Naseralla • Ahmed K. Ahmed Researchers Everyone

plan: THE • Step 1: Finding a Problem • Clarification • Ideation • Divergent Thinking • Voting • Problem Statement • Step 2: Exploring the Problem • Data Gathering • More Ideation • Divergent Thinking • Development • Convergent Thinking • Step 3: Deduction and Implementation • Evaluation • Six Thinking Hats • Deduction • Final Solution Statement • Implementation

Finding a Problemin AUC What do we want to see change in AUC? Step 1

Problem Ideation

ProblemStatement • How might we improve the system of registration in order to provide equal • opportunities to all students ?

Exploring the Problem What Ideas can we come up with to solve the problem? Step 2

Gathering • Freshman cannot enroll in the courses they want because they become full by the previous student categories. • Freshman are forced to go to departments to see if there Is any availability in the classes they need. • Some declaration required sources are very limited in number. • The system crashes once registration opens due to the over load. • The system is complicated and freshman lack experience using it. • Not enough classes and places available for some important core courses. • Freshman do not know precisely what to take or do • The most important student categories that AUC should watch out for are Graduating seniors and Declaring Students DATA

Solution Ideation We used divergent thinking to come up with 20 solutions

Solution Converging We used convergent thinking to categorize these solutions and eliminate those that cannot be implemented.

Solution Converging

Solution Prioritizing Clustered Groups • After clustering the 290 ideas into 5 clusters we decided to prioritize them. • We argued about which would be best, which lead to us placing “improving the system as the top priority since it was one of the main reasons behind the problem. With limiting pressure right after since it is somehow related.

DEDUCTION AND IMPLEMENTATION OFSOLUTION What IS THE SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM and how can we apply it? Step 3

Preliminary • Cancel online registration • Registration through departments • First come first serve basis • No differentiation between student category Solution

Solution • Through studying the preliminary solution one realizes that we have only looked at the situation from a freshman's perspective. • Asking other students about their opinion and investigating it further we realized that our strife for “equality” was wrong since what we were supposed to look for is “justice.” • In other words we have to find what is more suitable for the more needy is the declaring and graduating students rather than look to equally distribute it amongst everyone. evaluation

Solution evaluation Fair Distribution • After applying the evaluation of the difference between equality and justice and realizing that our preliminary solution could not be implemented, we filtered the four clusters and came up with two solutions: • Better server from the system improvement cluster • More sections from the limiting pressure cluster Rescheduling The two most fair, just and implementable solutions that would benefit every student on campus

Solution evaluation • There are important core and declaration required courses with very few sections. • The classes are always filled by the seniors sophomores and juniors before they reach the freshman. • Not limiting periods of time for specific student categories was hectic. • The server is always pressured by the quantity of people registering and crashes. • The server is incapable of holding the student capacity. • The server is slow.

Solution evaluation • Pressure: need to register to class before the others do. • Anger: the server crashed/ the class is full • Frustration: the server is loading to slowly • Stress: all y classes are full. • Changing the server would allow the students to calmly register for their courses without the fear of it crashing • More classes would give the students a sense of relief that there are still open courses.

Solution evaluation • More sections of important core and declaration required courses = more declared students and less time and money wasted. • More sections = more opportunity for freshman • The schedule and registration system doesn’t have to be completely changed • The server will not be pressured by the quantity of people registering and will not crash. • The server will be capable of holding the student capacity. • The bigger better server will be faster.

Solution evaluation • The actual process of finding a better bigger server may be time and effort consuming • Very costly • More sections = more time devoted by professors or more professors • Not enough classrooms for more sections. • Not enough equipment and utilities for new sections. • New sections will cause and increase in expenses and salaries •  Increase in expenses and salaries = increase in tuition fees.

Solution The process of finding a better bigger server can be given to volunteering students and faculty to limit time and effort Fundraisers can be made for the finance of this solution. Professors can be compensated or incentivized to offer more sections Courses that have too many unneeded sections can decrease their sections to allow for courses who are more demanded or more important to have more sections. To compensate for the increase in expenses that would result from more sections one can decrease other expenses such as light and water. evaluation

Solution Implementation • To implement this solution the AUC registrar has to make some sort of survey to keep track of classes on high demand and classes on low demand for each semester. • By doing so it would provide vital information based on which we can decide which classes deserve more sections and which classes need to have less sections. • Other than that the AUC has to try to find a solution as to improve the server and find a way to make it faster and bigger to allow more people without it crashing.

SolutionStatement • Toimprove the system of registration we can, provide a bigger server and offer more sections of important/needed courses.

THANKSFOR YOUR ATTENTION

Registration in AUC