The Organization, Regulations, and Courses book will be placed on Dartmouth College Information System within the next year and expanded to possibly include longer course descriptions and course syllabi, according to College Registrar Thomas Bickel.
"We hope to have the 1996 ORC on DCIS," Bickel said. "If we are able to get the system working, the 1995 ORC may be on-line later this year."
Bickel said the on-line version of the ORC will offer expanded features.
Bickel said academic departments may have the option of putting in longer course descriptions and possibly publishing course syllabi on-line.
"The on-line ORC will initially allow users to locate course listings in the database by course number, course title,department, term and time, course description and special degree requirements it satisfies," said Bob Brentrup, DCIS project director for Kiewit.
The on-line version of the ORC will also enable the Registar and academic departments to make sure students have the most up to date information about courses.
"It will be a handy tool," Bickel said. "We'll be able to do more updates of the ORC throughout the year."
An on-line ORC can also be adapted to include new programs.
"We would also like to have the ORC available electronically to support a student advising system that is being planned," Berntrup said."For example, this could allow a computer program to evaluate the effect of a student's deciding to change majors on their remaining course selections," he said.
Director of Academic Computing Malcolm Brown also saidplacing the ORC on DCIS will be more convenient.
"The advantage of having the ORC on-line is that people will be able to have access to it anywhere, anytime," Brown said. "It streamlines and modernizes the process."
Bickel said the shorter paper version of the ORC will still be available and that once the ORC is on DCIS, the College "might put it on the World Wide Web so people can read it from anywhere."
Brown said the process of making the ORC on-line is "challenging," and that the "group is making progress."
He added"things are early in the planning stage."
Bickel said representatives from the Office of the Registrar, Kiewit Computing Center and other areas of the College have met since late spring to discuss the issue.
"The project is underway, but we still have a lot of work to do," Bickel said.
Bickel said he did not know how much the on-line version would cost, but he said the College would save money in printing costs in the long term.
