Dallas College’s transition to Workday has received mixed feedback during its first semester in action.
The new system, which replaced the former eConnect platform, offers a simplified portal that allows students to register for classes, check financial aid status, pay tuition, assess academic progress and manage student accounts without having to log in to multiple webpages. Instructors also use the system to display classes available for registration, although the course scheduling process has been reported as being imperfect.
“I had an experience where I had courses on my calendar that weren’t mine, and also classes that have been cancelled are still showing on my schedule,” said Laura Neal, an English professor at Richland. “Brightspace and Workday, they aren’t communicating, so I’ve had wrong classes in there.”
According to Neal, many students ended up registering for the cancelled classes that were wrongly displayed as available on Workday. Still, she thinks Workday is a step in a positive direction.
“Ideally, Workday is better in that it streamlines everything into one portal,” Neal said. “But I know that there’s been some hiccups with the transition, like with everything new, so I’m optimistic.”
Richland student Caleb Giddings also experienced similar technical issues when registering for his Fall classes.
“When it came down to my Japanese class, I couldn’t see the timing at first,” said Giddings. “So, I will warn that is something to look out for in the future.”
Giddings registered for his Japanese class despite not knowing when the class was taking place, and while it fortunately aligned with his schedule, the same result is not guaranteed for other students.
Workday is supposed to function more efficiently than eConnect, but there still appears to be a steep learning curve in its development. While some may assume the issues are within the system itself, Richland’s informational technology support team says the problems may not be entirely technical after all.
“The techs in B220 don’t deal with Workday in any capacity. We deal with classroom issues, administrator office issues, things like that.” said Garyle Morgan, a systems support specialist at Richland. “Because depending on the issue with Workday, it’s going to be somebody different. Workday includes some IT on the backend to make it work, some HR people, some marketing people, there’s a whole bunch of people involved.”
Issues like classes not displaying properly, for example, may have been a mishap in the HR department rather than with the programming of Workday itself. Still, the process is new and, at times, inconvenient. Morgan urges students and professors to call IT support for Workday troubles, where technicians will assess the issue and reach out to the appropriate departments for assistance.
Workday may be less than ideal, but it offers certain advantages over the former eConnect. Like all things new, only time will tell whether the transition was worth the struggle.
