Student registration system gets overhaul at Langara College

By BRICIA CORTES

Langara College is upgrading its 28-year-old student manager system, which handles registration and other student-based information, because the current system is outdated.

Langara has been using the same information system, known as Banner, since 1996. The college is working with office management company Deloitte to switch to a system called Workday which was introduced to staff in 2020. Langara and UBC are the only post-secondary schools in B.C. to adopt Workday.

David Cresswell, Langara’s associate vice-president for strategic transformation and CIO, said Banner no longer meets the needs of the college because of its advanced age. Banner has also caused technical issues with students and staff.

“Although the transition to a new system always involves a learning curve, we believe it will be a better experience for students and employees,” Cresswell said in an email to the Voice.

Banner and Workday perform two different services for Langara staff and instructors. While Workday manages tasks such as recruiting, hiring, and personnel management as well as tracking budgets and spending for individual college departments. Banner is still used for student management, scheduling, notifications and grading.

Workday to streamline and smooth out the bumps experienced with Banner

Langara students interviewed by the Voice said they experienced registration problems with Banner. Daniela Cebrom, a second term student, said Banner performed slowly for her.

“I have had some problems such as very long waiting time when I want to register my courses. The platform just stops working,” Cebrom said. “In my first term, I needed to register four courses and I was only able to register two.”

Hannah Kloyber, a second semester political science student, said it is difficult for her to use Banner because it’s confusing.

“The classes will fill up before I can get to them, or it’s not very intuitive, it’s very difficult to plan or create a schedule,” Kloyber said.

Brent Kennedy, chair of computer science at Langara, said that Banner should be replaced.

“Once a company says that software is end of life, they’re not gonna provide updates for it anymore,” Kennedy said. “It has to be replaced and so that I think it is not for debate. If something’s end of life, it is end of life, and we need a new piece of software to support that function.”

He said security was a big reason that made the replacement of Banner necessary. He said if hackers were to get into the Banner system, nothing could be done to stop them since the system is no longer supported.

Consultation with college staff and instructors for the transition of students to Workday has been ongoing for several months. The exact date on which students will start using Workday is unknown. The timeline to roll it out is six to 12 months.