The next wave in education: Online enrollment

What do you remember most about school enrollment? Long queues, unavailable subjects, missing advisers, countless forms to accomplish, cash shortage, etc. – all this and more will soon be a thing of the past.

At the De La Salle University-College of St. Benilde (DLSU-CSB), a pioneer online enrollment program is already being pilot-tested for adoption next trimester. No more queues, confusion and chaos during school opening. The whole process was simplified and made so much more efficient through the help of state-of-the-art technology.

How easy and efficient can it get? A student logs on to the school website, click on the online enrollment hyperlink, and the online registration begins. A first-time enrollee will be asked to accomplish a form to get his or her personal data such as name, birthday, address, course, etc. Then an ID number and password will be issued. This will be used by the student throughout his or her stay in the school.

The next step will be to accomplish the enrollment form. No need to pick the subjects one by one from a master list. All the subjects for a particular course in a particular trimester will be on the enrollment form by default. But the student can add or remove subjects depending on his eligibility or willingness to enroll in such subjects. If a student includes in his or her subject list one that needs a prerequisite course, which he flunked in the previous trimester, a warning will be automatically issued that he is not authorized to enroll in the subject.

An itemized computation of the tuition and all miscellaneous fees will pop up on the screen and the student has the option if he or she wants to pay online or offline. For online payments, one can use a Bancnet ATM card or a major credit card. If the student chooses to pay offline, he will be issued a reference number, which he will submit to the school cashier when he pays the tuition in school. A student can also choose to purchase his books, school supplies and uniforms through this facility.

All the information that a student encodes in this form will go the school’s database and will be updated each time the student enrolls throughout the duration of his stay in school. Using this ID number and password, a student can also access grades online, update one’s self on the events taking place in school and keep himself posted on important campus announcements.

If one is a regular student, in good academic standing and is enrolled in a block section, he doesn’t even have to log on to the World Wide Web. Using his cellphone, he can enroll, view his grades and keep abreast of campus events via the Short Messaging Service (SMS) or more popularly known in this country as "texting."

Parents can also monitor their children’s performance in school. Using the ID number and password of their children, they can monitor their subjects, how much was paid during the enrollment, the grades they obtained in the previous trimesters, and a complete listing of the school’s holidays and important dates.

Filipino software

Techno-idealists and Internet evangelists, rejoice! The programming geniuses behind this educational software are Filipino computer experts who banded together to make a difference in the field of education. The software: Advanced Technologies for Electronic Enrollment Systems (ATIS), the pioneer Internet-enabled enrollment and information system in the country. The service provider: SerbisyoPinoy Solutions Inc., a leading e-firm specializing in education software and other applications.

DLSU-CSB is actually the first school that will be using this system and the plan is for the whole De La Salle University educational system to implement this in the next few years.

Says Heidi Fernandez, PR manager of SerbisyoPinoy, "We are happy that one of the most prestigious schools in this country is the first to stake its trust in our product."

DLSU-CSB, for its part, according to Robert Robang, director of the Certificate Training Center, decided to get the ATIS software because it offers a complete, user-friendly and affordable online registration system. "This will make the college customer-focused and elevate service levels to new dimensions," he says.

Moreover, DLSU-CSB’s information systems director, Ricky Singson Que, says, "ATIS fits the school’s information requirements. DLSU-CSB, as an educational institution for innovation and academic excellence, hopes that the long quest for our information needs will be answered by ATIS."

After DLSU-CSB, SerbisyoPinoy hopes other schools will follow suit and implement ATIS as well.

For schools with no substantial budget for information technology, take heart. The ATIS software was built on an open platform, which means that SerbisyoPinoy is offering it to educational institutions for free.

"What we charge schools are service fees for building the database (if they don’t have one yet), managing the database and other IT services," explains Fernandez. "The advantage of this is that this system also allows the school to manage its accounting, management and information systems smoothly."

This early, several schools have already expressed interest in the ATIS software and several memoranda of agreement are already lined up to be signed between SerbisyoPinoy and leading educational institutions.

"Our company’s vision," says Agbayani, "is to contribute to the upgrading of our educational system and to make technology accessible to the largest sector of the Philippine society. Moreover, we would like to use new technologies such as SMS, which has become very popular with young people in the education sector."

SerbisyoPinoy also develops software and other applications for government, business and non-government agencies. Among its products are pre-paid Internet cards and e-learning or online education. For additional information, visit www.serbisyopinoy.com or send e-mail to [email protected].