“I Hate oZONE” began as a 21st century version of an angry town hall meeting: a Facebook group created for students to vent frustrations with OU’s new student portal, particularly its enrollment function.
“I went to the oZONE site, and that really was all [I] needed [to start the group],” said Michael McKeever, international and area studies senior.
McKeever said he started the group in late September, and the group has grown to 1,801 members, as of Wednesday evening.
But it’s also grown into a way for members of OU’s oZONE team to receive and respond to complaints about the system.
“Obviously, the name ‘I Hate oZONE’ didn’t make us love it at first,” said Lindsey Johnson, portal content manager for OU’s Web Communications department. ”But it really gave us the opportunity to have a conversation with students in their environment, and I don’t think we would have been able to do that had this group not been created.”
Johnson said she discovered the Facebook group while the oZONE team was in the process of hosting public forums about oZONE’s new enrollment system.
“Those didn’t, I think, end up being the proper format to address the backlash from students,” she said of the public forums.
Instead, the oZONE team turned to “I Hate oZONE,” she said.
“I was almost kind of excited that that page was there,” Johnson said. “Because I thought, ‘OK, finally, here is our outlet to really give students that information, show them what’s in the sausage.’”
McKeever said the members of the oZONE staff who post on the group’s wall have been helpful, and they are trying to work with students.
“I’m glad they did, because that was kind of the point [of the group], to get them to fix it,” he said. “From what I can tell, I think they’re really taking what we say seriously.”
Johnson said four members of OU’s oZONE team are currently interacting on the “I Hate oZONE” wall: herself, OU information technology spokesman Nick Key, executive director of financial aid Brad Burnett, and director of academic records Rick Skeel. The oZONE team considered creating an online alter ego to post on the group’s wall, but eventually decided it would be best for those individual members of the team to communicate with the Facebook group.
“We really thought it was best if [we] just posted as ourselves so people could see who we were and know there are faces and lots of people behind the whole process,” Johnson said.
The comments on the “I Hate oZONE” wall, along with comments left on sites hosting oZONE training videos, through oZONE and on the oZONE team’s own Facebook group (oZONE: The University of Oklahoma Portal), have already lead to changes, Johnson said. Some of those changes include moving the enrollment window to the top and middle of oZONE’s academics tab and renaming other items within oZONE, she said. oZONE now also gets its weather information from the Oklahoma Weather Lab, a student-run forecasting organization, instead of from the Weather Channel, Johnson said.
However, McKeever said he and other student posters on the group still want other things, including trial schedules and improving the look of the site.
“I think they’re doing a really good job on working to fix a lot of the stuff,” he said. “Just maybe they should have worked to fix it before hand. I think that’s basically what the site’s about.”
Trial schedules are in the works, Johnson said. However, several members of the oZONE team have said they will not be available this semester.
“We definitely are working to make the whole thing look better,” Johnson said. ”Because it’s really 1995 right now, in there. That’s definitely one of our focuses.”
McKeever and Johnson both said the oZONE team is working to set up a town-hall forum to address issues with oZONE and discuss the portal’s future.
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JJanowiak 2 years, 6 months ago
In a big kid world you finish writing software before you release it. Maybe try that instead of switching where the freaking weather tab is? You all are TERRIBLE DESIGNERS and you made an AWFUL PRODUCT. It's insulting that you're looking at this group to make individual tweaks because the whole thing is a great big steaming, unnecessary pile. None of these people should still be employed in this department.
NickOUIT 2 years, 6 months ago
JJanowiak,
I know students are frustrated, but your post presumes to know a lot about the process. OU designed the OLD SYSTEM. The one everyone loved.
Many of those same people helped implement this new system. Does that mean we've lost our minds and deserve to be fired? No. We had to make a change because of the ailing (and 40 year old) infrastructure supporting our existing online services -- not just enroll.
Developing customized products in-house, though, was entirely too expensive and time-consuming. We had to purchase a system. This new system, which includes the enrollment modules people are frustrated with, is a suite of products developed outside of OU and employed at over 1,100 Universities nationwide.
Did we expect it to be better than enroll? No. Enroll was one of the best enrollment applications anywhere. No system out there had an enroll module that could touch what we offered already. I don't know of too many schools that offer trial schedules.
But we also couldn't make a million changes to it before rolling it out because of the risks. We just transferred 40 years worth of data, services, and databases. If we had also made thousands of customizations to the user interface, it would have been impossible to troubleshoot even the easiest problems. Students can still enroll, and the system is available 24 hours a day. If we had tried to shoot the moon, who knows if either of those statements would be true.
So we unfortunately had to roll out the default product, which you're using, and we'll begin making changes (already have) to make it as user-friendly as enroll was. Trial schedules and better tables (to view course listings) are the first two priorities on the list.
As for your AWFUL PRODUCT statement, you're only viewing one small aspect of the overall system in enroll, which is, we'll admit a pretty critical aspect. However, there are so many other things oZONE offers (outside of the enroll aspect) in the way of infrastructure, added features, and options for the future that the old system couldn't. It will just take a little time to put it all together in a pretty package.
If you have any specific feedback about the site, we would love to hear it.
LauraGibbs 2 years, 6 months ago
A change which I had suggested in a comment to a previous Ozone article was about the Search feature - right now, it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to do a search across all departments, but when students are searching for Gen. Ed. classes, they do not care (usually) about the department. In the same way that the Schedule Type and Instuctional Methods DEFAULT TO ALL, the same should be true for the Subject search. The Subject search should DEFAULT TO ALL. Trying to select all inside that tiny window for the departments is all but impossible. That is one small change that would make a HUGE difference. Right now students are using enroll.ou.edu to search for Gen. Ed. classes because Ozone makes it almost impossible to search for Gen. Ed. at Ozone.
Also, in enroll.ou.edu the default search was for OPEN courses only; you had to manually override that to search for both open and closed courses now. In Ozone, I cannot even tell if it is possible to search for open classes only. If that is not possible, it is a HUGE drawback. There was a good reason why enroll.ou.edu defaulted to a search for Open Courses only. If so, I sure am not seeing that option available on the Ozone search screen.
FatherJack 2 years, 6 months ago
"We had to make a change because of the ailing (and 40 year old) infrastructure supporting our existing online services -- not just enroll."
I keep seeing the "40 year old infrastructure" excuse (in business that is known as a Elevator Statement). How the hell did OUIT let their infrastructure get 40 years old?
"If we had also made thousands of customizations to the user interface, it would have been impossible to troubleshoot even the easiest problems. "
That is flat out false. Databases have nothing to do with the html and css of a site. You're trying to say because you transfered data from an old infrastructure to a new system that you couldnt make a table of information NOT span 1000 pixels wide or label something like "rem" to "Seats Remaining" so that students enrolling know how many seats are left in a class? Thats FAIL.
"and we'll begin making changes (already have) "
What changes have you made already?
"Trial schedules and better tables (to view course listings) are the first two priorities on the list."
Where can we see a documented list of changes made and priority list of changes to come?
"Did we expect it to be better than enroll? No. Enroll was one of the best enrollment applications anywhere. No system out there had an enroll module that could touch what we offered already. I don't know of too many schools that offer trial schedules."
Since Enroll was one of the best apps in the nation, no one thought to borrow the interface or at least TRY to create a similar process in ozone? How much user interface testing was done before this was rolled out? Did you even ask students and advisors what they thought of the process BEFORE you rolled ozone out? In the professional world that is called a Development process.
So, basically OU spent over 2 million dollars for a back-end with no thought as to how users will interact with it. WTG!
TheJR 2 years, 6 months ago
My guess is that in two years or so, we'll see something similar to enroll and everyone will forget all of the back-and-forth going on right now. I'm not a big fan of ozone, but I do see that it has potential. I like the idea of everything on one site and the fact that I can access it 24/7 is a huge, huge benefit. Unfortunately, I've had my fair share of technical issues and it has been a frustrating process... but honestly, it's totally expected given the fact that it's a brand new system. I emailed enroll@ou.edu and got a response within 5 minutes (and that was at 8:30 PM, after my window opened), and my technical problems were resolved quickly.
It's a frustrating process, but I think it's being handled the proper way. Try some constructive criticism instead of harassing the people trying to help.
hmartin 2 years, 6 months ago
"This new system, which includes the enrollment modules people are frustrated with, is a suite of products developed outside of OU and employed at over 1,100 Universities nationwide."
Oh, that explains it. Since 1,100 universities are dumb enough to pay for this junk, we should too! The enroll portion of o-zone is indefensibly bad. I agree with JJanowiak- to attempt to placate the user base with promises of minor tweaks is absolutely insulting.
"However, there are so many other things oZONE offers (outside of the enroll aspect) in the way of infrastructure, added features, and options for the future that the old system couldn't. It will just take a little time to put it all together in a pretty package."
This is similarly insulting. Rather than continuously claiming that o-zone offers ambiguously-detailed pluses, give us specific reasons why our money was well spent on a product that, to the end user, offers nothing but headaches.
Perhaps the money spent on pretty ads featuring oddly unnecessary pictures of students could have been better allocated to a pr firm capable of providing us with real answers.
Gibor 2 years, 5 months ago
Why did they have to "roll out" the product in the middle of the academic year instead of for, say, summer enrollment? It seems like that would be a better test for initial problems and that OU jumped the gun a bit on implementation of this system.
Oh, and people have a right to be frustrated at complicated systems, dear anonymous. For many students, this is just another bit of red tape they've had to deal with when going to OU. School can be a bureaucratic nightmare and enrollment tends to test everyone's patience.
OU IT is having to deal with all the irritations of this new Sungard system, as well as the students and instructors. I feel like many people are just frustrated by the drastic and abrupt change from a familiar system. OZone enrollment doesn't have the facility of the 'point, click, preview, done' system that enroll had. I do not understand the necessity of CRN's and do not like that there is no semester planning, but they are working on the system to improve it. Like any piece of software, there will be bugs, issues, and grievances from the client.
I'm sincerely hoping that the current oZone system is like a 1.0 and will be continuously improved to become a more user-friendly system. Until then, the IT department has remained available for the users to address issues.