Our long and arduous wait finally came to an end Sept. 28 — with much fanfare, OU IT unveiled its newest creation, the oZONE online “portal.”
I think we’re all still celebrating. I mean, how could we not?
Just watch the video released by OU interviewing students prior to the release of oZONE, available on the home page of the “portal.” One girl goes so far as to say she is “psyched” about the impending release of this magnificent Web site, while the others look as if they can barely contain their ecstasy.
They explain how much simpler and more enjoyable our lives will be with this new technology. No longer will we have to log in to every OU Web site we go to! Finally we can enroll in our classes 24/7! At long last, we no longer have to spend hour after frustrating hour trying to find information about financial aid!
Unfortunately for oZONE, the only real problem that the vast majority of us had with any of OU’s Web sites was that Enroll somehow seemed to manage to be down literally every time we really needed it.
Thankfully, that problem has been fixed by the ‘portal.’ Enroll was too inconsistent. oZONE solves that — it is completely unusable regardless of when you log on!
If you haven’t tried the enrollment portion of the new site yet, prepare to be amazed. The last time I used a site so spectacularly impossible to navigate, my mom was screaming at me to get off the Internet because she had to make a phone call.
Because of this, I could not be more thankful that I only have to enroll in one class for next semester before I graduate. Searching for the class using the exact title failed to return any results. The only way that I could find the one class I needed was to scroll through the entire spring 2010 list of history offerings.
But hey, at least we can all find the page now because it’s in the ‘portal!’ I never could remember if the site that you enrolled on was called “Enroll” or “Learn” or “Craigslist.”
The other features of the site are redundant at the absolute best. It adds no new content, but does provide convenient links to highly sought-after pages like the OU Student Code and Faculty Handbook. For those of you who used to spend hours trying to get to that stuff, your prayers have finally been answered.
And now we are finally plugged into the “OU Community!” We are invited to relax with some blog called “Unwind.” I checked it out. Featured was a post which claimed that the Backstreet Boys’ latest album isn’t worth our money. Clearly they have no credibility.
There really isn’t a whole lot else to see.
I’ll concede that being automatically logged in to every site at once is better than not, but how difficult is it to enter login information?
Plus, I rarely go to every OU site at once. Typically I just check my e-mail, or if I need to use Enroll or Learn I will go to those places. Only very rarely do I use three or four of the sites in one sitting, so the time saved from logging in is completely negligible.
I can’t figure out why it was necessary to spend an undoubtedly large amount of time and money to essentially compile a bunch of links and put them on a single page.
And any positive enjoyed by the new site is completely negated by the truly abominable new Enroll interface. How anyone could possibly take a look at that system and find it worth a dime is beyond me.
The only problem with the old Enroll site was that it was unable to be accessed during many times students wanted to use it. Unlike the new one, though, when it was up it actually made sense. The layout was clear and easy to navigate.
Unless large changes can be made with the enrollment interface quickly, the oZONE system creates far more problems than it is worth.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
think 2 years, 7 months ago
i'm glad the ouDaily can offer idiots a chance to get published ... so they can think they have made a statement worth reading. do you people really think about things before you write them? or was this an assignment that was forgotten until the last minute?
ousooner1997 2 years, 7 months ago
So true.
Eagles101 2 years, 7 months ago
-Mr.Chintan-
Henry's article is valid. The site has many holes, including the inconsistency that it even works. Can you elaborate on your comment regarding 'fact checking'? As a fellow OU student and Ozone user, I agree fully with the OPINIONS in this article- because after all this is the opinion section, right?
Also, is it necessary to criticize a students intelligence on a well-written 'opinionated' article? Is he not getting the same education at OU as you? Your lousy attempt to assert a scene of credibility by announcing you are a Ergonomics GRADUATE STUDENT is foolish, and certainly obvious you were trying to do just that.
And to answer your final question [What was Mr.Martin expecting from OZONE?] -- I think he, as well as the rest of OU were simply expecting NOT to be disappointed.
ousooner1997 2 years, 7 months ago
So true!
Tank 2 years, 7 months ago
I agree, the enroll portion of oZone is annoying and hard to navigate.
barbhaya 2 years, 7 months ago
I always look forward to the opinion columns in The Oklahoma Daily that are disguised as real information. Is Henry Martin qualified on any level to judge the usability of a website? Or did he talk to any experts or even staff at Information Technology? Is he intelligent enough to remember the difference between Learn and Craigslist? Judging by his column, the answer to all those questions is NO. I am a graduate student whose research is Information Ergonomics. Undoubtedly, there are a few parts of Ozone that could be improved. But overall the site is very effective for students who actually use different OU websites. Moreover is reduces time spent logging into different websites, not to mention links to IT support and Libraries. I sincerely request the editors at OU Daily to fact check or at the very least give thought to the columns published in the paper. What was it that Mr. Martin was expecting from Ozone?
Thanks,
Chintan Barbhaya Graduate Student-Industrial Engineering
vexeuz 2 years, 7 months ago
I just looked at the HTML source code and noticed that it is about 10 years outdated. The people who are working on oZone need to get up to date with web technology. Who uses tables anymore? I am pretty sure senior IT students can do a better job than this. OU administration should have just hired their own graduates to do the job for probably a lower cost. As a public university, shouldn't they have tried to help their graduates get a job?
rojo 2 years, 6 months ago
I lay awake at night praying that I won't ever know how much this "upgrade" to our websites cost us.