UL registration goes digital

A digitized students’ registration process due to be provided by a Liberian – owned Software Company MWETANA to the University of Liberia (UL) has been demonstrated at Fendall Campus, after UL President Prof. Dr. Ophelia I. Weeks declared Thursday, 5 April that the company will be providing the service.

The digitization / automation of UL’s registration system will replace the age – old manual registration and other student – related documentation processes that have stressed out thousands of university students enrolled at UL for so many decades.

The software company says students will be given usernames and passwords with inbuilt security detector mechanisms to detect whose logging in. MWETANA says students can stay at home or anywhere and plan courses online, generate control sheet and get billed by the system without visiting the Electronic Data Processing (EDP) windows on campus.

“It’s with great pleasure that I announce that the software company that will be assisting us in making our registration process more delightful for all concerned, that company is MWETANA,” Dr. Weeks announced at a souvenir program at Fendall Thursday.

During a mock registration process demonstrated at the program, Dr. Weeks said UL would like to have its Visitor, Liberian President George Manneh Weah and UL Board of Trustees on campus, but they want things to be a little bit better to avoid getting anything wrong when the officials turn out.

Dr. Weeks recalls that the University was trying to figure out ways to finance the process when some godparents led by President Weah made commitment to assist with making UL’s digitization process one of their 150 days deliverables.

MWETANA CEO Mr. Vivian Jones advises UL President Dr. Weeks that when you are putting such systems into place, you got to let the folks at the University know that this is what you want and you are not turning back.

He says based on what they know today registration process at UL for new students consists of 30 steps and 26 steps for existing students. But he announces that when the new process gets fully implemented, it will cut down students’ registration steps drastically from 30 or 26 to three or two steps.

Mr. Jones suggests that chaos during registration period at UL has to stop in this age, advising those who may not own phones or computers to borrow either their friends or parents’ phones or computers to go through the online registration process.

Those without credit cards would make payment at banks after being billed by the new system, but they will not have to go on campus to complete the process after making such payment, he adds.

The software company’s name MWETANA is taken from a Vai dialect in Liberia meaning “moving forward.” MWETANA Chief Technical Officer Mr. Karl R. Smith says the system is built in a way that will not allow students to see their grade sheets if they still owe the University.

Liberia College Dean Mr. Sekou Konneh applauded the initiative on behalf of faculty, urging his colleagues to build their capacity to be able to know if their grades are tampered with.

By Winston W. Parley