After 2010 start, development to finish by fall
USC will begin phasing out VIP this year as it transfers student services like course registration onto Self Service Carolina, a move intended to improve security and advance the OneCarolina program.
Virtually all the services aimed at students that are currently hosted on VIP will be moved over to the new site starting in the spring and continuing throughout the Fall 2013 semester, said Bob Swab, OneCarolina’s project director.
The changes will represent many students’ first interactions with OneCarolina, the university’s $75 million project that aims to streamline USC’s 30-year-old Legacy system and replace it with Banner, used widely by universities. The project was approved by the board of trustees in 2008.
The University of Georgia and College of Charleston already use Banner, and Clemson is implementing it as well, said Scott Verzyl, the associate vice president for enrollment management, who has been involved closely with USC’s roll out.
Development for the updated slate of student services began in 2010, Swab said, and OneCarolina will begin working on faculty-oriented features like human resources and payroll technology once the roll-out is finished.
The move includes core functions like course registration, which will move to Self Service Carolina for fall registration, and for smaller features, including P.O. box and parking assignments, which will make the switch over the course of the fall, Swab said. A new system for paying tuition and fees will be introduced in July.
But services won’t be switched all at once, and others will be changed gradually, so some will still exist on VIP after others have been moved onto Self Service Carolina.
Course registration for summer and fall terms happen at about the same time, but they won’t happen on the same sites, Verzyl said. While students will start using Self Service Carolina for their fall courses, they’ll still have to use VIP to sign up for Summer I and II classes.
That could cause some confusion, university officials said, so they’re pushing a third site, my.sc.edu, to point students in the right direction and list where each service is being hosted, Verzyl said.
It was promoted with an email to students last week, and USC will start making video tutorials, buying ad space in The Daily Gamecock and sending more emails as the systems change, Swab said.
Once those services start rolling out, though, it’s hard to say what kinks USC will have to work out, Verzyl said.
“We test in a testing environment, and you think of every scenario you can, but no amount of testing will replicate a system that is in a live environment,” Verzyl said.
The toughest transition could be the forced switch from USC ID numbers — faculty and students’ social security numbers — to randomly generated VIP numbers, meaning many users will have to memorize another number.
The move aims to better protect students’ information, Verzyl said, a growing priority in the wake of security breaches last year in the College of Education and the state Department of Revenue.
This switch will impact day-to-day technology around campus, all the way down to the hand scanners at the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center.
“That’s something you’ll have to become more familiar with,” Verzyl said.
Students will have to re-enroll at the gym with their VIP number, a transition that began at the beginning of the semester, said Kim Dozier, Campus Recreation’s associate director for programs. When that switch will be completed hasn’t been decided yet, Dozier said.
Admissions ran into those sorts of issues after it moved to the new system last summer, Verzyl said, but it helped move the office to go effectively paperless, capture more information about prospective students and access it off campus.
Those are features designers of the Legacy system hadn’t thought important, and Verzyl said he hopes the updates will ultimately make improvements across campus.
“It will get better over time,” Verzyl said.