Third-year law students experienced some problems Wednesday when they became the first students in the OU system to use oZONE’s new enrollment system.

One issue involved students not being able to enroll in classes with the same course number, but different course titles and content. The College of Law lists 22 classes with course numbers 6100, 6400 and 6700 in oZONE.

OU’s old enrollment system looked at course titles, as well as course numbers and subjects to determine if a class was a duplicate, said Shari Black, OU registration implementation specialist. She said the new system does not look at course titles to resolve such conflicts.

Once the issue came to the oZONE team’s attention, they created both a short-term fix and prepared a long-term solution, Black said.

“In the short run, what [the College of Law] did is they gave all the students who were enrolling permission to enroll in a duplicate course,” she said.

Erin Maxwell, a third-year law student, ran into the duplicate course problem when she attempted to enroll at 8 a.m. Wednesday, the first opportunity for any law student to enroll. Maxwell said Deborah Case, College of Law Registrar, helped her resolve the issue.

Black said she would implement the long-term solution to the problem Tuesday night and did not expect any problems with duplicate course numbers moving forward.

Students also had issues with oZONE requiring incorrect prerequisites for certain classes.

“I tried to enroll in First Amendment [law] and it said I lacked a prerequisite,” Maxwell said. “I tried again about five minutes later, probably, after trying to figure out what the prerequisite was, and it let me enroll that time.”

The College of Law’s Web site lists constitutional law as the only prerequisite for First Amendment law. First Amendment law is a required class for first-year students, according to the Web site.

Black said the College of Law provided her office with incorrect information regarding the prerequisites for First Amendment law. She said if information in course catalogs is incorrect the issue may reoccur when other students attempt to enroll for spring.

“We have asked the departments to go in, during our training sessions, and check [the prerequisite information] and as they’re identifying [issues], we’re fixing them,” Black said. “If the catalog isn’t right, they’re going to be wrong. Departments have been trying very diligently to look at them, and we’ve been fixing them as they tell us about them.”

Adam Wilson, third-year law student, said the lack of trial schedules with the new oZONE system made enrollment more difficult. He enrolled at 4 p.m. Wednesday, and said he needed to find some back-up classes after courses he wanted filled before he could sign up.

“Now I’m stuck trying to find classes at the last possible minute and find the [course reference numbers] for them, which aren’t the same as the numbers on the old site, so you have to go back and look through a bunch,” he said. “And that’s creating a problem. Every minute you’re spending is a minute somebody else is taking your class.”

Black said SunGard, the company OU is working with to implement oZONE, is releasing an update which will allow students to create test schedules, but it won’t be ready for enrollment for spring.

Both Maxwell and Wilson said they preferred the old enroll.ou.edu system.

“[oZONE] needs a better graphical interface so you can see what you’re doing,” Wilson said. “The old system was really good about that.”

Maxwell said she preferred enroll.ou.edu’s user-friendliness and accessibility.

Matt Hamilton, OU’s registrar, said he pledged to continue to enhance the system.

“The functionality is not what we would like it to be yet, either, and I think that’s an important message,” he said.

Hamilton also said the oZONE team considered “bolting” the enroll.ou.edu system onto oZONE, but decided against it.

“Basically, every time we would study this issue ... the complexity told us probably another six months and several hundred thousand dollars to do that,” he said.

Hamilton said he valued Wednesday’s enrollment experience as a chance to improve the system before the bulk of OU students enrolled.

“We certainly value the fact some law students had reported some issues to us and it actually gave us an opportunity to almost instantaneously improve the system and the enrollment experience for those that actually were coming on a little bit later in the process,” he said.

Enrollment for law students continues today at 8 a.m. and continues through Friday, according to an e-mail sent to law students.