Imagine students waiting in a line stretching from Beardshear Hall to the Memorial Union simply to add a class to their fall schedule.

Such inefficiencies plagued Iowa State’s old registration system, according to Registrar Kathleen Jones.

But by the fall of 1987, students finally had a more convenient way to register. Touch-tone registration became the new phenomenon that enabled students to enroll in classes by phone in minutes.

“Touch-tone respects students’ time,” said Laura Doering, associate registrar. “If you compare it to the old way, it’s been a blessing.”

Special equipment and 47 phone lines are dedicated to the touch-tone system, Doering said.

Vocom is the equipment which answers phones and interprets phone signals.

It sends messages to the mainframe computer, which stores information on classes, she said.

The mainframe sends messages back to students, Jones said.

The voice that welcomes each student to telephone registration is not a computer voice, but is the voice of an ISU faculty member.

Jones would not reveal who is the man behind the voice.

Prior to touch-tone, students filled out a schedule request card. Six to eight weeks before a term started, a batch process computer algorithm determined schedules.

To change schedules, students would have to go to terminals in the Memorial Union, where changes were made on-line.

The idea to change ISU’s registration system developed in 1984 with an On-Line Registration Task Force, which proposed an on-line registration system.

The request was denied, particularly due to the lack of space for a central registration site.

The idea to implement a new system was not entirely ignored, however.

Four representatives from the Administrative Data Processing Center and the Registrar’s Office visited Brigham Young University to study its touch-tone registration system.

Approval for a touch-tone system was granted in 1985. ISU was among the first big universities to use the system and the “satisfaction level [of the registration process] went up considerably,” Jones said.

In a 1995 American College Testing student opinion survey, ISU rated significantly higher than other universities in registration satisfaction, Doering said.

Results from a 1998 survey will be reported next fall, she said.

Currently, about half of all larger universities use touch-tone registration, but the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa is among the exceptions, she said.

Doering said she thinks the only possible drawback of touch-tone is the maintenance cost of $45,000 a year.

“With any good product you’ll have cost maintenance,” she added.

Touch-tone registration is not the last step for the registration process, Doering said the university is considering adding a World Wide Web registration process.

“Web registration would be an extra to the system,” she said.

Doering said one benefit of the new alternative, which touch-tone does not offer, is that it allows students to see if a class is full. She said she is uncertain when Web registration would be offered along with the touch-tone system.