A number of University of Lagos undergraduates have expessed frustration occasioned by difficulties with online course registration. The university’s management has announced that students who failed to register their courses on the school’s portal would have to defer a semester.
Reacting to the school management order, affected students have voiced their complaints, stating that they did register their courses on the portal at the beginning of the semester.
During the on-going academic session, the students were said to have encountered difficulties when attempting to register their courses on the school’s portal.
The challenges faced by the students included not being able to view the courses they registered for on the portal, instead, they encountered elective courses and outdated course codes.
An anonymous victim, a 300-level student, claimed that they registered their courses on February 8, but that when they logged into the portal to print their docket a week before the examination, they discovered that the docket tab was missing.
He said, “I refreshed the page thinking the site was experiencing a glitch, but the docket tab still didn’t appear. I thought there might be traffic caused by other students trying to generate their dockets, so I logged out to try again later.”
According to him, all attempts to generate the docket were futile, adding that when the school portal was reopened, it was only for editing courses. “Those who benefitted were those who had about two or three courses reflecting on their portals’, he added, saying “For those of us who had none, we could not re-register our courses afresh.”
He said students again notified the school management about this development, but it appeared the school was determined to see the students all as unserious people who failed to meet the school’s deadline.
The undergraduate hinted that they had planned a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Folasade Ogunsola, on June 5 to seek assistance regarding the matter. He, however, expressed regrets that instead of the Vice-Chancellor, the Director of Student Affairs arrived at the meeting to inform them that they should defer the semester.
Another student, a Law undergraduate at the university, also spoke anonymously and gave his own perspective on the problem. According to him, it was evident that the students were suffering due to the University of Lagos’ shortcomings. The students picked holes in the claims by the university, saying that if they hadn’t registered for their courses, it didn’t explain why an entire department had to rewrite their examinations after the initial clearance.
Adejoke Alaga-Ibraheem, the spokesperson for the university, issued a statement in response to the effect that the school’s academic portal was reopened four times to accommodate students who were unable to register or make changes to their course selections.
According to the school’s spokesperson, shortly after the portal’s third closure, the university management began receiving reports of computer and internet glitches, as well as cases where registered courses disappeared from students’ registration forms on the portal.
As a result, he explained, the portal was re-opened the fourth time to allow students with such issues to edit their course registration appropriately from 6:00pm, Wednesday, May 31, to 11.59 pm on Thursday, June 1, 2023.Alaga-Ibraheem explained further that each time the portal was reopened, the information was sent via information flash, the university website, social media pages, LAGMobile, and WhatsApp among others, adding that by the time examinations started, no fewer than 33,419 undergraduates had registered for their courses and printed their dockets.
“It is the responsibility of all students to complete course registration within the allotted period on the academic calendar approved by the university’s senate. This is crucial for effective planning and management of resources for lectures, continuous assessment and examination for the semester,” the statement concluded.
