Online Course Registration
proposed by Ning Ge (nige)
January 29th, 2000

1. Background

--Overview 

As Internet become more and more important in people's life, universities
throughout the country are moving their administrative services online.
Brown University students can now check their fellow student's current
phone number, dorm location, concentration and graduation date, etc online.
They can also view the grades and registration status online.  But to 
register for classes, Brown students still have to go to the registrar's
office multiple times every semester.

This project is intended to move the whole registration process online,
including the pre-registration process and the add/drop of courses at
the beggining of every semester.  The online course registration system
is a web-based secure system that allows students to view and change
their registration status.

--Target Users

The system is targeted at students and professors of universities throughout
the country.  Many universities in the country, including Brown, are not yet
providing this service to students and faculty members.  


2. Requirements and Features

--For Students

  --Online course registration.
    - course pre-registration
    - adding, dropping, changing sections of
    - changing grade options of a course
    - adding to wailists
    - get permission for a course 

  --Access to registration information 
    - courses registered
    - grade option
    - permission

  --Access to student grades for past semesters.
    - grades from past semesters
    - GPA calculator

  --Ability to order transcripts and requests for verifications of 
    enrollment.
    - number of copies, address
    - pay online

  --Online concentration declaration.

--For Professors

  --Access to registration information
    - number of students registered in the course and their information
      (year, concentrator or not, etc)

  --View advisee's pre-registration profile and sign it online

  --set up waitlist and lottery
 
  --post grades online

--For Administrators

  --Easy maintainence

  --security

* Extended feature: could be linked with existing systems, such as BOCA,
  so that students can register for a course when surfing the course
  announcement website.

3 Performance

--This system must be reliable and secure.  Only students and faculty members
  should be able to access these data.

--This system must be easy to integrate with possible existing systems and database
  

4 Testing

Brown students, as potential target users, could help to test this system so that
we can find out if it is stable under heavy load.  Permission to link to the student
and course database may be neccessary for testing, or we can make some dummy data 
for testing purpose.