This document is a brief guide to the Banner registration system
Enhanced Class Search screens as currently implemented at
Northeastern University. This is the part of the system that
allows a student or an advisor to search for courses and class
sections.
Enhanced Class Search is a vast improvement over the class search
facilities provided natively in Banner.
Link to Enhanced Class Search
Enhanced Class Search can be reached directly from the web or via
Self-Service Banner (SSB) after login to myNEU. It is much more
convenient to access Enhanced Class Search directly from the web
because then one can stay focused in the Add/Drop pane of SSB
when doing course registration. In addition, from the web, it is
possible to open multiple class search tabs.
Here is the link to
go to Enhanced Class Search directly from the web:
Once you go to this page, you may wish to bookmark the link in your
browser.
Search By Term
The first page that you reach when click the Enhanced Class Search
link is a page where you must choose the academic term in a dropdown
menu.
Currently this dropdown contains academic terms for 3 different units
at Northeastern:
The undergraduate, Masters, and PhD programs
The Law School (Law)
The College of Professional Studies (CPS)
A term that refers to the latter units will normally mention Law or
CPS explictly. An exception to this rule is that CPS courses that
run on the semester calendar currently use the same term selection as the
undergraduate, Masters, and PhD programs.
As a user, your task on this page is to
select the term in which you wish to find courses
and then click Submit.
Enhanced Class Search: Main Screen
When you click Submit on the Search by Terms screen,
you are directed to the following screen:
In Enhanced Class Search, this screen makes visible the 6 options that are
used most frequently:
CRN
Subject
Course Number
Title
Attribute Type
Course Level
To see more specialized options, click on More Options.
If the CRN zone contains 1 to 5 digits, then the class search will look
for all classes whose Course Reference Number contains that sequence
of digits.
All other options will be ignored in this case.
This facility
is primarily useful to an advisor who may be asked by a student to register
them for a class with a given CRN and the advisor wants to see beforehand
what the class is.
We will now explain how to use each of the other 5 zones
to make selections and refine the class search.
The Subject, Attribute Type, and Course Level
zones use a scrollable
selection box that permits one or more items to be selected. These
selection boxes work similarly.
The Course Number and Title zones use a simple text
box. These text boxes may be empty, may have specific text to
search for, or may use the symbol % one or more times
to indicate a more sophisticated wildcard search.
Note that when you have made all of the selections needed to define your search,
click the Submit button to perform the search.
Although we will explain many techniques below,
keep in mind that the simplest of
searches may be done by selecting one subject and clicking theSubmitbutton to see all courses being taught in
that subject.
You should look into the more sophisticated
techniques only on a need-to-know basis.
Both the Subject and Attribute Type zones contain an
All option. You must make a more specific selection in at
least one of these zones or the search software will refuse to
proceed. This avoids downloading a vast number of classes that
would strain the server and be impossible for you to easily view.
Task: To select one subject
Click anywhere in the Subject zone. Then
quickly type the first few letters of the subject. You will
either hit the subject or be very close to it. You may use the
up or down arrow keys on the keyboard to adjust this selection
to find the single subject that you are seeking.
To make the search results more specific, you may want to add
constraints before clicking the Submit button.
Using the Subject zone in a more sophisticated fashion
The default selection is All which means that
there are no constraints on the subject.
To select one subject, proceed as described above.
To make a contiguous selection
of multiple subjects:
Find and select the subject that
begins the group to be selected. Using the scroll knob
or the tiny arrows at the right of the Subject zone,
scroll down to the subject that ends the group to be selected
but do not click the mouse yet. Press the SHIFT
key. Then click the mouse on the subject that ends the group.
The whole group will be selected.
To select several
subjects that do not happen to be contiguous:
To do this, you will need to use
the control key (CTRL) on a PC or the command key (cloverleaf)
on a Macintosh. Let’s call this the special key.
Then you proceed as follows. Select the first subject. Then
use the scroll knob or the tiny arrows at the right of
the Subject zone to find the second subject. Press the
special key. Then click the second subject. Repeat as
many times as desired to add as many subjects as you wish to
the selection.
The same techniques for multiple selection apply to the
Attribute Type and Course Level zones.
Setting constraints in the Course Number zone
This zone may be empty in which case there
are no constraints.
A specific 4-digit course number may be typed into the zone.
In that case, only courses with that number will match.
If you type a sequence of less than 4 digits,
the search will match courses whose numbers contain
that sequence of digits anywhere in the number.
You may type the leading digits of a course number
followed by the wildcard symbol %. For example:
If you type 2%, you will match all courses
with numbers 2xxx.
If you type 25%, you will match all courses
with numbers 25xx.
If you type 250%, you will match all courses
with numbers 250x.
Setting constraints in the Title zone
The match of text in the Title zone with course titles
is case-insensitve. Furthermore,
the match of a complete title requires a lot of typing and
precision and so is not recommended.
This zone may be empty in which case there
are no constraints.
If you type a sequence of alphabetic characters and possibly
blanks, the search will match courses whose titles contain
that sequence of characters anywhere in the title.
You may use the wildcard symbol % to control where the search
process will match the text you have typed. For example:
If you type simply art, you will match courses with
art anywhere in the title by virtue of the previous
rule.
If you type art%, you will match courses that start
with art in the title.
Setting constraints in the Attribute Type zone
The default selection is All which means that
there are no constraints on the Attribute Type.
There are currently 5 categories of Attribute Type that are
listed in the following order.
NU Core: The Northeastern University Core
for undergraduates entering in Fall 2007 or later.
CAS Core: The College of Arts & Sciences Core
for undergraduates entering prior to Fall 2007. Note
that other colleges besides Arts & Sciences used the
requirements from this core in their programs prior to
Fall 2007.
CPS: The core categories for the College of
Professional Studies.
Full-time status.
Honors: The undergraduate honors courses.
Using the same techniques described above for Subject
selection, you may select one or more Attribute Type
settings to constrain the search to those courses with the
desired attributes.
Let us give some examples of Attribute Type selection using
the NU Core as the starting point. For convenience, you
may see the list of NU Core categories by expanding the
next section.
NU Core Categories and Abbreviations
This table is in the order used in the Attribute Typeselection box.
NU Core Category
Abbreviation
Writing: First Year Writing
NU Core 1st year Writing
Writing: Advanced Writing in the Disciplines
NU Core Adv Writing in Discpln
Arts/Humanities Level 1
NU Core Arts/Humanities Lvl 1
Capstone
NU Core Capstone
Comparative Study of Cultures
NU Core Comp Stdy of Cultures
Experiential Learning
NU Core Experiential Learning
Mathematical/Analytical Thinking Level 1
NU Core Math/Anly Think Lvl 1
Mathematical/Analytical Thinking Level 2
NU Core Math/Anly Think Lvl 2
Science/Technology Level 1
NU Core Science/Tech Lvl 1
Social Science Level 1
NU Core Social Science Lvl 1
Writing: Writing Intensive in the Major
NU Core Writing Intsv in Major
Remember, to find all courses that match one or more
Attribute Type selections,
select All in the Subject zone.
Now let us give the examples.
To find one NU Core attribute such as
NU Core Arts/Humanities Lvl 1, select this attribute.
A student in the sciences or engineering
might wish to choose an NU Core elective outside their field
by selecting the following 3 categories for the search:
NU Core Arts/Humanities Lvl 1
NU Core Social Science Lvl 1
NU Core Comp Stdy of Cultures
A student in the arts, humanities, or social sciences
might wish to choose an NU Core elective outside their field
by selecting the following 3 categories for the search:
NU Core Math/Anly Think Lvl 1
NU Core Science/Tech Lvl 1
NU Core Comp Stdy of Cultures
Setting constraints in the Course Level zone
The Course Level zone is very simple because besides All
there are only 6 options:
CPS - Continuing Education
CPS - Graduate
CPS - Undergraduate
Graduate
Law
Undergraduate
Normally, you can eliminate the return of courses you are not interested
in by selecting one of these 6 options. In a few cases, you may wish to
select both undergraduate and graduate listings.
Finally, there is one extremely important check box option:
Show only courses with seats available
This check box allows a student or advisor to hone in on sections
that still have space for registration.
Enhanced Class Search: Results
Let’s start with a general piece of advice.
If you want to go
back from the search results to the Enhanced Class Search
screen, we recommend that you use the browser back button.
This is the best way to return to the search context that you left.
In this section, we illustrate the kind of results delivered directly
by Enhanced Class Search. For this search, we selected:
Subject: English
Course Number: 1111
ENGL 1111 is the fundamental freshman writing course required
for undergraduates. Therefore, this course has many sections and the
search results page is lengthy. For illustration, we selected one
section, 75, out of the long list of search results.
This section happens to have some extra features
that make it a good example.
The first line of these results has very important information:
The Type of Information
The Specific Instance
The Course Title
College Writing
The Honors Designation, if appropriate
(HON)
The Course Reference Number (CRN)
11561
The Course Number
ENGL 1111
The Section Number
75
The Campus
(Boston, Main)
The Credits
Credits 4
The Course Reference Number (CRN) is the code that is used
to add this particular section to a student’s schedule and
to later reference the section for rosters, grades, etc.
The first line is also a link to the
catalog course description page.
The linked page also repeats the information on
levels and course attributes
that is available on this screen.
The second line for this section begins with Please Note:.
Most sections do not have such a line. If the unit offering the
course or the Registrar’s Office has special information
concerning the particular section, it will be displayed in such a
line.
You can see that there are many additional facts about the section
on this screen. We will summarize the most important information.
Associated Term: This is a reminder of the term in which
the section is offered so a student does not accidently register
for the wrong term.
Restrictions: This is a list of restrictions that a student
must meet to register for the section. For example, this section
is restricted to Honors students and others will not be permitted
to register.
Type: This explains whether the information to the right is
for the Class itself or for its Final Exam.
Time: The time slot for the section or the final exam.
Days: The abbreviations for the days when the section meets
or for the day of the final exam.
Note that T = Tuesday and
R = Thursday.
Where: The room ... once the room decision has been made.
Date Range: The dates for the term when the section meets
or the date range for the final exam.
The next 4 data fields apply only to the section not the final exam.
Capacity: The desired limit on the section enrollment that has
been placed by the unit offering the course.
Actual: The actual student enrollment in the section.
Seats: The seats available for registration. Computed as:
Capacity - Actual
Room Size: The room size ... once the room decision has been made.
The Seats number represents the number of seats that are available
within the capacity limit set by the unit offering the course.
This number must be positive for a student to register for
the course or for an advisor to register the student.
You will notice in the above example that the value of Seats is
actually negative, -7. This can happen in one of two ways:
The Registrar’s Office in seeding freshmen into the section
has temporarily exceeded the capacity with the expectation that the
problem created will be fixed later on.
The unit offering the course has made an explicit decision to permit
certain extra students into the course above the usual capacity.
The above screen snapshot was taken in mid-June for Fall semester so it
is definitely the case that this is an instance of situation 1.
Let us comment on situation 2.
In some cases, a unit will recognize special circumstances presented
by a student and override the section capacity in order to
admit the student into a section. This does not happen often. The
best process is for a student who seeks an override to speak to or
e-mail their advisor and have that advisor inquire on their
behalf if the override may be granted. Note that an override
may be impossible to grant simply because the actual number of
students in the section has reached the room size.
