TeleBEARS and InfoBEARS

An online enrollment system using web technologies. Tele-BEARS was implemented in 1991 and has changed the entire student enrollment and registration process on the Berkeley campus. Since the inception of Tele-BEARS, enhancements have been made: Info-BEARS was developed to compliment Tele-BEARS by dispensing student enrollment, grades, and financial aid information; Summer Session and wait list processing were added to Tele-BEARS; and improvements were made in the Course-wide restrictions and seat reservation screens in Tele-BEARS.

The success of Tele-BEARS can clearly be seen during the semester startup when there are virtually no lines of students at Sproul Hall. Tele-BEARS and Info-BEARS function smoothly and contribute to the success of the semester startup. Several factors account for the successful operation of Tele-BEARS and Info-BEARS and students, faculty, and staff have learned how to use the system effectively. New screens and reports have been developed to assist academic departments in monitoring course enrollments and in managing their courses. Several major upgrades have been done to Tele-BEARS equipment, resulting in machines that are faster, more reliable, and have the capacity for more concurrent users.

Reduces pressure on Tele-BEARS. The work is divided between the two systems, with Tele-BEARS primarily doing enrollment processing and Info-BEARS dispensing information to students to prepare them for doing their enrollment processing on Tele-BEARS. The use of Info-BEARS has increased dramatically. The processing capacity and speed have increased as a result of the upgrades in equipment.

For regular semester processing, new features have been implemented. For example, Info-BEARS now has a menu option to search for open English reading and composition courses. This will ensure that students can find out about all available options and not focus just on the most popular courses.

Academic departments and the student service offices use Tele-BEARS. Staff are able to use screens to view wait lists, monitor class enrollments, and help make decisions to add sections. With experience, department schedulers have become proficient in using Tele-BEARS and are able to anticipate necessary schedule changes.