Plan your future

The U of W launches a new student planning tool

The University of Winnipeg’s info page about the student planning app.

Photo by Daniel Crump

An enhanced student planning tool is now available for University of Winnipeg (U of W) students.

The tool, called Student Planning, is the most recent addition to WebAdvisor, the U of W online registration system, which provides students with an opportunity to be more autonomous in managing their degree.

With this tool, the students are able to plan their courses in conjunction with their degree requirements and choose the sections they want to take. 

Inga Johnson Mychasiw, the director of student support services, says that it will help students to be on track and to be clear on what they need to take.

“What it does is it combines ongoing planning of a degree,” she says. “You can plan every term and a year up ahead. It’s an online system that combines planning of all the courses you want to take in your degree and you can select your sections and do your timetabling right in this program and then you’ll actually register through this program.”

Judy Tanner, the coordinator for the student records office, says that the new interactive system is very user friendly and intuitive.

“It’s colourful and it’s going to tell you if (the course is) completed, it’s going to be in green. If it’s planned, it’s going to be in yellow and if you haven’t started it will be in red.”

Another addition to the system is the online self-service graduation application, which will allow students to have a quick and easy way to apply to graduate.

“It will tell you you’ve met those 90 credit hours. It will tell you you’ve met all the requirements to graduate. So then a student will just know and not be sort of madly confused – is it OK, is it not OK. The system says you’ve met all the requirements. And then they know they can go to that self-service application for graduation,” Mychasiw says.

The new student planning tool has benefits not only to students, but also provides the opportunity for advising staff to be more accurate and available for students who need help.

“Now the students that are comfortable with student planning will be able to do self-service and figuring it out themselves. And if students that want to meet with an advisor, hopefully there will be more availability,” Mychasiw says.

“And in terms of the advisors’ work they won’t have to manually figure things out, they will just be able to log in and see, so they can have more time to be discussing things with students rather than just figuring out degree plans.” 

Busola Akinola, a third year student majoring accounting, says that the student planning tool will be very convenient.

“I think it’s a great concept because it’s trying to give students the opportunity to plan ahead. Prior to this, students were able to plan only for each semester and sometimes they didn’t consider the prerequisites needed for the course. We can now monitor our progress and schedule classes ahead, which I think is fantastic!”

Published in Volume 70, Number 23 of The Uniter (March 10, 2016)

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