Everett Ohland uses One Bellarmine, Bellarmine’s new portal. Photo Credit: Corbin McGuire
Students came back to classes at Bellarmine University for the Fall 2016 semester during a period of great change.
Among these changes were the new names and locations of campus hot spots, continued progress on Centro construction and a more user-friendly university portal, called One Bellarmine.
One Bellarmine is the site students can use to access online resources such as Moodle, class schedules, UKnight and even the university’s previous portal, MyBellarmine. Students can still log in and view information from Summer 2016 and previous academic years.
With the implementation of the new portal, students have offered mixed reviews as they learn the new system. International Programs Office intern Mitchell Dietrich said he misses the simplicity of MyBellarmine.
“I prefer the old system, but that’s probably just because I’m used to it,” Dietrich said. “I feel like the new system tries too hard to be ‘modern,’ making it a little bit over-complicated. I feel like MyBellarmine was very simple, which made it easier to navigate.”
Bellarmine Registrar Ann Olsen explained that although MyBellarmine may have been simpler for students, it made activities like registration more complicated. The new Ellucian Colleague system, which came with OneBellarmine, allows for 3,500 students to register per hour, a huge improvement from the old portal, which only allowed for 20 students to register at a time.
“We needed a new computer system at this university. The current system is antiquated. It doesn’t handle the needs of our university anymore,” Olsen said when interviewed by The Concord in the Spring 2016 semester.
While the system is an overall improvement, particularly when students are registering for classes, some students have had technical difficulties with the system.
“I like that everything is in one location, but a lot of the features like Moodle do not work on mobile devices,” junior Tanner Mobley said.
Junior Annie Wadley had a similar experience to Mobley’s.
“Sometimes when I type in ‘OneBellarmine,’ I get one home page and sometimes I get another. For one, I don’t see an option for ‘email.’ Maybe I just haven’t found it yet,” said Wadley. “That’s been the most frustrating thing, different home pages with different navigation and options but still under ‘OneBellarmine.’”
With colleges across the country updating their systems and many teaming up with Ellucian, the university’s drive to offer the best registration experience possible should not go unappreciated as we are now able to keep up with the “2,400 institutions and 18 million students in 40 countries around the globe” that currently utilize the service, according to Ellucian, even if some troubleshooting is required.
The move has been challenging, but overall positive for the university.
“I’d say it’s a little less efficient just because of how long it took to get used to it. I think it’s hard to navigate at first, but once you figure out where everything is, it’s relatively simple,” junior Kylie Tate said.
With simplicity for students, faculty and staff at the center of the university’s progress this semester, One Bellarmine is a logical and exciting change that the Bellarmine community should embrace.