For the first time, all NIU students can register for their upcoming classes with the online TRACS system.

TRACS can be accessed at the Registration and Records Web site, www.reg.niu.edu, where students can register for summer and fall courses between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. every day.

During the past two semesters, only select colleges were able to use the system so that Registration and Records could determine whether it would work.

Department director Don Larson said the current program was modified from the version used previously by the colleges of engineering, health and human sciences and visual and performing arts to open it to larger number of students.

So far it’s been working well, Larson said.

“We have quite a bit of capacity, and we’re pleased with how it’s going,” he said.

Registration and Records did not formally announce the change before registration began April 9 because the department was not sure how it would work, he added. The class schedule booklet doesn’t mention much about online registration because the system wasn’t completed until after the booklet was finished.

Kevin Haseman, a sophomore time arts major, tried TRACS online and got the job done.

“I liked it a lot better,” he said. “The way it’s set up, you can see your schedule and you don’t have to worry about accidentally overlapping one of your classes.”

Bruce Oates, assistant director of Registration and Records, said volume testing was done to make sure the system could handle a lot of users at once.

“We were very pleased,” he said. “Our technical folks did a really nice job putting the system together and they got everything in place so that it would work under high volume.”

The system is receiving several thousand hits a day, though the majority of students still use the phone registration method at 753-8900, Oates said.

Old habits may be hard to break, but Web-TRACS offers a more visual advantage, he said.

“There’s actually a grid on Web-TRACS that will show you your schedule, so you can see what your schedule looks like during the week.,” he said. “And that ‘s a nice plus.”

Eventually, Oates hopes to see the online system advance further — possibly by linking with a student’s DARS report to help a student decide which classes to take.

Another possibility would be allowing students to find out more about a class than what is currently available in the schedule booklet.

“It’s not something we can do tomorrow,” Oates said. “But hopefully, in the future, we can do some of those things. Anything to get more information into the students’ hands.”