How Often Is Lion Path Updated
Talk to any student, parent, professor, employee, or Penn Stater and the vote is unanimous: LionPATH sucks.
LionPATH was advertised as the catholicon to eLion's issues, promising to exceed or at least encounter the sometime system's functionality and outdated user interface. Merely anyone who's used both tin attest to the major downgrade that LionPATH represents despite high expectations and large promises — and an even bigger price tag ($66 million, and counting).
LionPATH was over-hyped, over-priced, and the system clearly wasn't even close to prepare to be rolled out university-wide. Penn Staters shouldn't expect every wrinkle to be worked out with a new system, but we at to the lowest degree deserve to take a student management system that isn't insultingly ugly, difficult to navigate, and dysfunctional.
As the university prepared to finalize the transition from eLion to LionPATH, the bug were getting to the point where some students' class schedules were impacted and others were wrongfully admitted. To appointment, here'south a list of the issues that LionPATH has caused — and these are just the ones we know about:
- Atrocious user interface
- Hard navigation
- Inadvertently sent admission offers to students who weren't supposed to get them
- Useless mobile app
- Automatically rescheduled students classes for them across university control
- Inexplicably dropped students' classes
- Lacking degree audit feature
- Forced Bursar to extend tuition deadline
- Down during the first week of classes due to transition
- Shutdown in the heart of the regular drib deadline day
- Inability to combine the student fees into the Student Initiated Fee on the bursar bill, which is supported by both students and President Barron.
- Inability to implement a healthcare difficult waiver, supported past students and the administration.
If y'all're not a current Penn State pupil dealing with this mess, you may have a difficult time grasping merely how offensive this interface really is. Take these examples:
This is what it looks like when you offset log in. We don't think they were going for ultra-minimalism.
To schedule classes, you need to add the courses to your shopping cart. President Barron has said fourth dimension and time again that a Penn State educational activity should not exist similar "going shopping and picking courses off of a shelf" but an immersive and pupil-centered learning feel. If yous didn't believe Penn State had gone fully corporate yet, expect no further than the "Enrollment Shopping Cart."
On the degree audit page — a function that notwithstanding isn't functional for well-nigh students — one must select "Penn State University" from a dropdown menu earlier proceeding.
These are just a few of the more than ridiculous quirks among hundreds in this $66 1000000 boondoggle.
Students aren't the but ones impacted. Earlier this week, I was i of the thousands of students who trekked to the Bursar'south function and waited more than than an 60 minutes in a line that weaved through the lobby and out the door because LionPATH wouldn't have their tuition payment. The staff member who helped me said the new system has been causing problems for countless students, parents, and even employees in the Bursar office. Nobody knows how to do anything on LionPATH because of how poorly the site is designed and because of import features seem break more they work.
Compensating by extending the tuition deadline wasn't exactly reassuring. Penn State's tuition is notoriously loftier in-state compared to other public universities beyond the state, out-of-staters have to pay even more,and tuition merely increased. Going to Penn State is a huge investment, and it'south unnerving to trust a organization that randomly drops people's classes without alarm and bumps them down to office-time with your coin.
Administrators will tell you to "get over" the functionality and apperance and assure you lot that the backend is more stable than eLion's "duct-taped" programming behind the user experience. That LionPATH has a strong backend skeleton, whereas eLion was susceptible to crashing and security breaches at much higher frequencies.
Bullshit. For $66 million, we all deserve better. For that price, we deserve strong functionality, attractive apperance, AND a stiff backend.
When the university attempted to explain ane of these glitches, information technology presented LionPATH equally the "new, comprehensive student information organisation that Penn State is implementing" in the same breath that it acknowledged a site glitch erroneously admitted students.
We sympathize that eLion's cease was virtually and a new system was necessary, simply this new organization should have been shored up long earlier information technology was introduced, and let solitary before it was officially live equally the new (and only) pupil direction organisation. I'd rather sheet in an old gunkhole while the new 1 is being congenital than take the new one out on the water and drown to death. (Although the Penn Country administration would probably merely tell my grieving family to "go over information technology.")
Speaking of the official transition, the administration couldn't have picked a worse time. The alter from eLion to LionPATH occurred during the first week of classes, and in society to complete changeover LionPATH had to be entirely shutdown from 10 a.m. to two p.chiliad. on Saturday, which was too the terminal twenty-four hour period for regular class drop. First off, moving the regular drop deadline up from the eye of the second calendar week of classes to the end of the starting time took a toll on students — I wasn't even able to get in to see my adviser earlier the deadline. And if yous are on the fence and decide to drop a class on Sylly week Sat, odds are you're going to be doing information technology one-time between 10 a.thousand. and 2 p.m. considering it's the first total weekend back in Country College, among other weekend-related reasons. I'm difficult-pressed to believe that window was the but four-hour menses eLion could be switched off and LionPATH switched on, and, inconvenient to say the least, the poor option of time was a slap in the face to students who have already weathered so many glitches from the site.
Merely despite the loftier price tag and hard deadline for rolling out the organization, LionPATH wasn't ready to handle the stress of scheduling, tuition bills, student aid, drop/add…the list goes on and on. Moreover, the elements of student life that LionPATH handles include the two most critical to students seeing as you can't attend classes if you aren't enrolled in any and y'all can't enroll in any if yous don't pay Penn State tens of thousands of dollars.
Unlike the transition of Grade Management Systems from Canvas to Angel — which has as well been happening for the terminal twelvemonth but has gone much smoother and efficient — you can't only accept a few students schedule on LionPATH to test if the system will be able to withstand tens of thousands of graduate and undergraduate students at one time all trying to do the same thing. A few teachers tested Canvas in their classes final year and now unabridged colleges are requiring professors to be in the new learning direction system. Information technology was phased in, it'due south easy to navigate, and it doesn't look similar total garbage or insult students' intelligence by using terms like "shopping carts," which should never appear in academia unless you lot're taking a course on grocery stores. Perchance we can rent the Canvass people to do LionPATH?
If it'due south not set, don't forcefulness it. If the user interface needs some polishing — nay, a complete overhaul — exercise that before you set students free to schedule classes. If features like the degree audit aren't even available yet, then build them in and delay the transition. eLion may accept seen better days, merely it's difficult to excogitate a system worse than LionPATH and the countless defects it'south presented.
Penn Land is a world-renowned academy full of smart students, great opportunities, and e'er-advancing research and engineering science. Equally such, we deserve a pupil management system that can stand up up to daily, necessary tasks without frustrating, insulting, or baffling students.. It's prophylactic to say that the only people who have benefited from LionPATH are the programmers and developers who wasted our money and the hundreds of students who would be walking by the fountain now at Penn Country Altoona on their way to class but for a glitch in the system.
For $66 1000000 nosotros deserve better than LionPATH.
Source: https://onwardstate.com/2016/08/31/we-deserve-better-than-lionpath/
Posted by: keyyouts1951.blogspot.com
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