For university students, course registration is a significant decision that is responsible for their schedule for an entire semester. Consequently, prior to the actual course registration, students devote significant time and effort into planning diverse timetables and scrupulously curating their course selection. However, this process takes a different turn for first-year students in their first semester. They are not only unable to use the (course registration) cart system but also miss the opportunity to register for courses at the same time as currently enrolled students. Furthermore, they encounter inconveniences in modifying their already-assigned schedules. CAH aims to explore the issues surrounding course registration in the first semester of the freshmen and propose possible solutions through this article.

Course Registration Process for Freshmen      

The course registration process for normal enrolled students typically involves several steps: adding courses to the (course registration) cart, course registration, adjusting course selections, and canceling enrolled courses during specific periods. However, the course registration process for incoming freshmen lacks a specific sequence for adding courses to the (course registration) cart. Secondly, course registration for freshmen proceeds with transfer students after the course registration period for enrolled students. For freshmen, timetables are initially assigned randomly by the office. Therefore, to make changes such as adding or dropping courses, freshmen need to modify their timetables during the designated course registration period for freshmen.

The Current Problems of the Course Registration for Freshmen

Inability to Register for Highly Competitive Courses

As mentioned above, timetables for necessary liberal art courses or major required courses that incoming freshmen must take in their first semester are arranged in advance. For the rest, any other courses a student wishes to take is needed to be chosen through direct course registration. In such cases, it's like asking for the moon for freshmen to be able to register for popular liberal art courses. For popular courses, a lottery system allocates 30% of the seats to enrolled students, and the remaining 70%, which also tend to be preoccupied by students with more course registration experience, puts freshmen at a disadvantage. Freshmen often find themselves competing for a few remaining slots or facing situations where no slots are available at all. When it comes to major courses, it's common for all available seats to be taken during the course registration period for enrolled students. Furthermore, using the cart system allows for consecutive enrollment of pre-selected courses without needing to search individually. This creates a problem for freshmen who need to search for each course and then register, resulting in a slower enrollment process even during the adjustment period. According to the survey, 68% of the participants responded that it is difficult to take popular courses during the course registration period for incoming freshmen.

Problems with Scheduling

 Secondly, there are issues arising when students attempt to organize their course schedules to align with their personal schedules. The timetables assigned by the university are generated through arbitrary allocation, without considering individual circumstances. This means that class sections and schedules are determined without regard for students' needs. As a result, if the freshmen intends to enroll in additional courses, they must find classes that do not overlap with the schedule of the courses already assigned to them. In this process, it becomes inevitable for students to enroll in classes that occur very early or late in the day. Moreover, due to the composition of their schedules, freshmen may also face situations where they are unable to enroll in their desired courses. This deviates from the purpose or intention of university course registration systems, which are intended to allow students to construct their schedules in alignment with their aptitude, major, and interests. In the actual survey, around 64% of students responded that they encountered difficulties in changing existing courses or adding new ones to their schedules during the course registration process when they were freshmen.

Negative Impacts on the Quality of Learning

 The current course registration system for freshmen can have negative impacts on the quality of their learning environment. For instance, when there are excessive gaps between classes, students are compelled to spend those intervals on campus, resulting in the waste of several hours and the inefficient utilization of study time. Furthermore, if subjects in which a student struggles are concentrated on a single day, it can lead to difficulties in keeping up with the class progress. Lastly, for commuting students, situations where multiple classes are scheduled in the first class or where daily commuting times coincide with peak hours can lead to physical challenges. This, in turn, disrupts consecutive class conditions, undermining the quality of learning. In fact, 31% of students responded that such disruptions in consecutive class conditions negatively impact the quality of their learning.

How Should the Current Course Registration System Be Improved

Possible Solutions

 While various problems have been raised regarding the course registration process for the first semester freshmen, it's difficult to disregard that due to their limited information and inexperience, random assignment of mandatory courses for the initial semester might be necessary. In this context, insisting that freshmen follow the exact same course registration process as enrolled students could potentially result in the opposite effect. Therefore, it is necessary to extend certain course registration privileges that were previously exclusive to enrolled students to incoming freshmen as well. This could involve allowing the use of the cart system for courses beyond their assigned ones for liberal art courses or considering the allocation of a reserved share of courses for freshmen, not only within the existing four categories, major, other departments, etc.) but also outside of these categories.

Examples of Other Universities

 Taking a look at examples from other universities, at Sejong University, there is a function similar to Chung-Ang University's cart system, known as "Interested Course Registration," which allows students to pre-select desired courses for registration. Although the premise of this function is the same – pre-selecting courses – it doesn't have functions like automatic or lottery-based enrollment. Furthermore, during the actual course registration process, students cannot consecutively register for pre-selected courses in the 'interested course registration' system. Instead, they must enter specific codes after registering for one course for the next one. Also, at Sungkyunkwan University, course registration is not divided between enrolled and new/transfer students but is segmented into four categories based on the expected registration semester. This division significantly reduces any disadvantages for incoming students, as registration dates are determined according to each student's semester of enrollment. Therefore, instead of completely dividing incoming freshmen from enrolled students in terms of the course registration process, addressing the problems of unfairness in freshman course registration can be resolved by allowing some of the features and methods enjoyed by enrolled students to be accessible to freshmen as well.

Chung-Ang University admits approximately 5,000 new students each year. In the 2023 admissions, a total of 4,966 freshmen were enrolled. The current course registration process for the first semester of incoming freshmen presents challenges in obtaining desired schedules, leading to problems like disrupted consecutive class conditions and hindering the quality of the learning environment. Furthermore, even existing students at Chung-Ang University recognize these inconveniences. In order to provide wide opportunities for diverse and flexible learning choices for a large number of incoming freshmen, Chung-Ang University needs to devise suitable alternatives to enhance the current course registration system for first semester freshmen.