A Bittersweet User Experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Ellucian Banner as our SIS (student information system) to manage student functions like registration, but also to manage personnel, administer financial aid, and manage student accounts. I work primarily in the "S" pages of Banner, which have to do with the student experience on campus. My office directly manages registration, the class schedule, degree audit, graduation, transcript evaluation, standing, academic records, and other pieces of the student academic experience on campus. Banner is our primary tool for all these things and requires an intermediate to advanced level of knowledge to use efficiently.
Pros
- "Quick Flows" allow me to create a chain of pages that automatically flow from one to the other. This is very helpful when I have to do the same thing repeatedly. It saves on typing and having to think about where I'm going next.
- Validation tables show all values that can be used in a particular field. This can be very helpful when needing to reference, add, or clean up values.
- In CAPP, using attributes to easily code changes in a student's curriculum is a dream. It's a great way to avoid having to make custom changes to a student's area, which means that changes made to the base area will always copy forward. I only use attributes when a change is common, so that I'm not multiplying attribute unnecessarily.
Cons
- The Banner 8 to Banner 9 (aka Banner Pages) transition was really rough. The speed of the system dropped by at least half. It has gotten better, but it's still not what it was.
- Banner Pages seems to preference mouse users. As someone who works with a lot of data, I loved how smoothly Banner 8 allowed a person to get around with just their keyboard. With the version change, some of the keystrokes changed, which I adapted to, but then pages were changed or added that don't have as many keyboard-friendly options. This seems short-sighted.
- There are parts of Banner logic that seem unnecessarily clunky. For instance, we have two different types of non-matriculated students that have two different credit ranges allowed. Credit ranges are controlled in a page called SFAMHRS. It seems to me that if both groups shared the non-matriculated type number, but one group had a unique student attribute and the other didn't that that would be enough to differentiate which range they get. Unfortunately, it's not. We have to code BOTH groups in SFAMHRS AND each individual student in SGSADD with an attribute because Banner pretty much ignores the one with the attribute if the other doesn't have one too.
- One of the reasons why the Banner 8 to Banner Pages transition was so hard and why the speed of the system dropped was because Ellucian decided to try to make it more "pretty". I'm a pragmatist when it comes to a database. I need fields that are easy to find and navigate. I really couldn't care less what the form looks like. In that preferencing of aesthetics, I believe significant function was lost.
Most Important Features
- Seamless integration of student experience components
- User-friendly UI, quick and easy to learn
- A spry system that transitions between pages and fields quickly and smoothly
Return on Investment
- When Banner was first implemented, it was miraculous to have everyone in the same system. We were all looking at the same thing and speaking the same language, which saves a lot of time and energy. However, one of our primary offices recently found a product that better suited them and are no longer using it. I worry that Ellucian isn't staying competitive and that, if more offices leave, we'll be back to speaking different languages, writing interfaces to try to get our various programs to communicate.
- When students are oriented to Self-Service Banner, most find it to be helpful for referencing information pertaining to their academic experience. The information it lists is basic, but it's nice that it is available nearly 24/7. I think that is increasingly becoming an expectation, rather than a perk, but students who engage in this way generally seem to do better academically. They retain and graduate, which are metrics we want to support!
- While I don't think we've quite used it to its fullest potential, reporting on outstanding requirements in CAPP has helped departments be more intentional with their offerings. If we know what students need to take to graduate, then we can make sure to offer those sections. This can become a money-saver when it comes to faculty salaries, because then part-timers and adjuncts are only hired when they are truly needed.
