TigerHub replaces SCORE; ICE may be phased out in future

The Office of the Registrar and Office of Information Technology launched TigerHub, a new online studentportal that replaced the Student Course Online Registration Engine, on Monday.

The system will continue to serve a similar purpose to its predecessor, allowing students to modify course enrollments, view grades and request copies of transcripts.

The design of individual pages of SCORE has been maintained in TigerHub, but students can now more easily navigate the platform, as all of the portal’s features are listed in a single menu on the system’s homepage, University Registrar Polly Griffin said. Students can also for the first time review their payroll checks, a feature Griffin said was incorporated primarily in response to feedback from graduate students.

In addition, Griffin and Undergraduate Student Government president Shawon Jackson ’15 both noted that one of the most significant improvements to the old platform is the introduction of “Course Planner,” a component of TigerHub launching on Thursday that will allow students to view their designated course queues in a calendar format, similar to the layout of the USG app Integrated Course Engine. The platform will also provide a search bar for course evaluations that mirrors the efficiency of the student-designed course evaluation site, easypce.com.

Griffin explained that an overhaul of SCORE was first proposed two years ago, after the Office of the Registrar received feedback from both undergraduate and graduate students.

“Ten years ago when SCORE was introduced by Oracle, it was among the first user interfaces, and it became a dinosaur. And that was acknowledged by everybody,” Griffin explained. “Every year, it felt clunkier and clunkier.”

Griffin explained that as part of the first step of launching a new student portal, the Office of the Registrar helped organize a planning committee in 2012 to decide the most relevant changes to SCORE that needed to be addressed. The planning committee included administrators, OIT staff and representatives of both the USG and Graduate Student Government, Jackson said. Griffin noted that the office also sponsored focus groups in which planning members could observe students choosing their courses using SCORE.

Jackson noted that USG representatives were extensively involved in the planning of TigerHub since the idea’s initial conception.

“We were very grateful that we were able to give our input from the beginning so that the platform could, in the end, meet students’ needs,” Jackson said.

He explained that, for the time being, ICE will continue to be updated each semester, although he noted the possibility that the now-popular app might be phased out depending on overall student responses to TigerHub’s Course Planner. Griffin likewise said that while TigerHub’s design incorporates all of the benefits of ICE, the decision to continue using ICE is absolutely a decision for students to make.

According to Jackson, feedback from other members of the USG Senate has been unanimously positive.

Griffin stated that, as of Wednesday, her office had received two emails from students with positive comments, and no calls regarding difficulties with the site.

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“What we wanted was something that required no instructions on how to use it,” Griffin said. “It’s Pass/D/Fail week, so we know that many, many, many students are in TigerHub doing their business, and they’re able to do it. That to us is our measure of success.”