For many University students, scheduling next semester’s classes means hitting ‘refresh’ again and again to access the schedule request feature on myLSU.
University IT communications and planning officer Sheri Thompson said in an email to The Daily Reveille that students are placed in priority groups that determine what day they can begin scheduling. According to the University registrar’s course registration calendar, the last group became eligible to schedule on Friday.
The first group that scheduled on Oct. 21 was the largest, with about 11,000 students, Thompson said. The registrar’s registration calendar states that the group includes “graduate students, graduating seniors and other selected students.”
In the past, PAWS would crash on the first day of scheduling because the system could not handle so many people trying to access it at the same time, Thompson said. PAWS was replaced in May with myLSU, which faced a similar problem this semester, she said.
“myLSU is hosted (like many of our resources are), and the vendor is making adjustments to handle the mass use of myLSU, which happens the first day of registration and then the first day of classes when drop/add is in the works,” Thompson wrote.
ITS officials do not think myLSU will be overwhelmed in the future, Thompson said. But even once logged into myLSU, students may not be able to access the schedule request page.
“Our system cannot handle thousands of people trying to add classes simultaneously,” Thompson wrote.
Thompson said to help manage the flood of users, ITS workers monitor the schedule request system and only permit several hundred students at a time to access the feature.
“If scheduling starts at 5 p.m. and thousands of people at 5:01 p.m. try to log on through multiple devices, they are really only exacerbating the situation,” Thompson wrote. “It has taken them, in many cases, until 5:30 p.m. to get in.”
Thompson said scheduling slowdowns now only occur during the first hour that the first priority group schedules. She also said ITS will need to replace the schedule request system in the coming years.
The registrar’s registration calendar states that all continuing students must schedule by Tuesday, or they must pay a $75 late registration fee.
