No more class schedules
PVCC goes paperless, online

By Allison Walker, December 2011
Staff Writer            

Paradise Valley Community College students will not use paper catalogues to plan their Spring 2012 classes because, this semester and forevermore, the course catalogue is only available online.

Photo by Allison Walker

As of Spring 2012, paper class schedules are a thing of the past at Paradise Valley Community College.

One year’s worth of research helped a specially designed task force make the decision to offer thecourse catalogue exclusively online. According to Denise Digianfilippo, dean of academic affairs and task force member, there were several important reasons for the decision.

“Efficiency,” Digianfilippo says, and goes on to include cost effectiveness, environmental sustainability, accuracy and currency of information, and better customer service.

“We also did take a survey… the majority of (students) were already doing online registration, so we were kind of going with the pattern of behavior that students were doing, because they’re becoming much more technologically savvy.”

The switch from paper to online registration also aligns PVCC’s processes with those used by universities, by omitting the printing of paper catalogs.

“We’re very excited about it,” says Cari Wilkins, NAU program coordinator at PVCC, about the online-only catalogue.
           
Northern Arizona University’s program, Connect2NAU, allows NAU transfer students to take university courses on the PVCC campus. NAU has been “paperless” for many years and is optimistic that a paperless PVCC will make student s’ transfers to the universities less distressing.

But should students expect a progression to online-only enrollment?

“Yes,” says Stella Napoles, supervisor of Admissions, Registration and Records.

For the first three days of registration, students found themselves disconnected from telephone registration and diverted to a computer when trying to register at the front counter of Admissions and Records.
           
“It was really, really fun,” says Napoles, about the first day of registration using an online only enrollment process.

She feels that both students and staff benefitted from the one-on-one, no-desk-between learning process and has hopes that the future will see students engaging with their My Maricopa Student Center more confidently.

For honors students, this could mean accessing a permission number to enroll in honors courses. Currently, students can only enroll in honors classes in person. A permission number is a class-specific code, assigned by the department, which each student would need to acquire before enrolling in an honors course.

The Honor’s Department at PVCC stopped printing honors course lists last semester, before the school discontinued the paper format.

But Rikki Shannon, Honors Program Advise r, can’t predict any changes to the in-person enrollment process. About the use of permission numbers she says, “I don’t feel like that’s a solution. It’s really more of an alternative if students would still need to come in.”

Nevertheless, PVCC faculty remains encouraged and excited by the progression to paperlessness. Its success or failure will be determined directly.