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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

One year later, iSIS receives mixed reviews from students, faculty

    The creators of the Integrated Student Information System (iSIS), as well as the students and faculty who use it, have mixed views one year after its implementation.

    The planning for iSIS, which launched in 2011, began several years ago with the intention to integrate student services across Tufts' campuses, according to the project's website. Although students and faculty tested iSIS while enrolling in Fall 2013 courses, use of the new system officially began this academic year.

    "By industry standards, the iSIS project was very successful," Director of Enterprise Applications in Tufts Technology Services Mark Damian told the Daily in an email. "We completed it on schedule and on budget. We've processed three registration periods, issued bills, accepted grades and supported graduations."

    "There was a broad range of involvement from the Tufts community, including subject matter experts from every school and student focus groups to provide feedback in the design of the portal," Damian added. "During its peak, there were up to 65 people working on the project, including technologists, consultants and student services experts."

    Despite positive reviews from those involved in the creation of iSIS, many students expressed disappointment with the system, which replaced the 20-year-old Student Information System .

    "Honestly, I think it was poorly done," senior Robert Lasell said. "The user interface is very strangely designed ... It's very hard to find what you want. If you want to use any function, like [registration], the menus make little sense, and the labels on them are unusual."

    Jeannine Vangelist, a staff assistant for the Department of Computer Science, echoed several of Lasell's sentiments.

    "It's not quite as user-friendly [as SIS]," she said. "[I use iSIS] to look up students ... and to deal with certain issues that come up with their transcripts or if they're ready to graduate ... We just generate a lot of reports that deal with student data. We have to run queries, and the names of the queries are not intuitive at all."

    Although Damian said his team has worked with faculty to explain the iSIS features, he acknowledged that they are not as intuitive as they could be and  said that difficulties with a new system are inevitable.

     "Even though there are some user navigation challenges, Tufts strategically chose to leverage a commercially available application for iSIS because it was impossible to meet the university's needs if we built a system from scratch," Damian said.

    After struggling for three years to use SIS, senior Christina Goldbaum said she has found the new system to be even more difficult to use than the old one, which was no longer supported by modern computer technology.

    "I have also found that [iSIS] doesn't always work in my Chrome browser, which can be frustrating at times," Goldbaum said. "Finding certain information on it is less intuitive than on SIS."

    While students have expressed frustration with iSIS, Professor of Computer Science Ming Chow had stronger words to describe the failures of the new system.

    "I have nothing good to say about the experience working with iSIS ... I would rather not say anything at all," he told the Daily in an email. "But then again, I also understand that per the Tufts CIO [Chief Information Officer], it is a system of records and not a system of interaction."

    Although there are many in the Tufts community who have not taken to iSIS favorably, others, like Miriam Santi, have expressed positive opinions of the new system.

    "I like it," Santi, the department administrator for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said. "I think there [are] obviously things that could be better. It might be nice if we had more reports or more things we could do ourselves. But it's just starting. You have to realize that it's a new product, and you can't expect it to be 100 percent what you want — [but] I find it very easy to use."

    Santi pointed out that those who had been using SIS for years could find it difficult to adjust to the new system.

    "I think a lot of people who have used the older system have a hard time adapting ... as a whole, we don't like change, so to try something new is hard," she said. "[Getting] used to new software can be hard for people."

    Senior Naomi Strauss also defended iSIS as a welcome change.

    "I think people are too hard on it," Strauss said. "It's definitely an improvement in comparison to SIS, and any new program that is implemented is bound to have some initial hiccups. I also think that iSIS has some great new features, such as the swapping system where you can switch one class for another."

    Damian agreed, and explained how switching from SIS to iSIS was bound to come with some small problems.

    "With any large, complex system implementation of this type, there are typical issues that surface," Damian said.

    Though she has encountered problems, Vangelis said that any issues with the system have been acknowledged and fixed rapidly.

    "There's a lot of interaction between the people who make it work and make it run, and I find them all to be very helpful," she said.

    Both Damian and Jack said the system will be in flux until all functionality and problem areas are addressed. All kinks in iSIS are expected to be fixed by this summer, and how students and faculty interact with the system will remain a high priority.12