New online tools make enrolling, paying for courses easier

By Joel Delgado ’12 MS ’17 

More options. More flexibility. More control.

This is what the creators of OneStop Enrollment Service’s new MyCourseScheduler promise to give students signing up for courses beginning this summer and fall.

After a soft launch last November, MyCourseScheduler is now ready to help students create their schedules in a faster, easier and more convenient way.

The new system, located under the Academics tab on your MyFIU homepage, changes the way students sign up for classes, automating the manual pen and paper process of creating a class schedule and giving students the ability to see every potential schedule scenario based on the courses they want to enroll in.

Here are some of the cool things you can do with MyCourseScheduler to make your course enrollment a smoother process:

1. You can add individual courses or import courses from MyPlanner into MyCourseScheduler

To add individual courses directly from MyCourseScheduler, click the “Add Course” button on the main page and then click on the “Search By Subject And Course” tab to search for the courses you would like to take for the semester one by one.

If you used the Panther Degree Audit (PDA) tool to add courses to MyPlanner and have assigned those courses to a specific semester, you can also easily import them into MyCourseScheduler.

First, click the “Add Course” button and then the “MyPlanner” tab. After that, you’ll see the courses on your planner for the semester you’re signing up for on the left. To the right, you’ll see all the courses you have already added to MyCourseScheduler manually, if any. In between, you’ll see an “Add” button.

Simply select all the courses you want to add to MyCourseScheduler from your planner and then click the “Add” button.

2. You can add breaks to your schedule before signing up for classes

Have a job during the week? Or are you in a club that meets on certain days and times each week? Or maybe you just don’t like taking classes before noon? Whatever the reason, you can block out certain days and times by making a “break” in your schedule.

Simply click on the “Add Break” button, enter a name for your break and select the days and times you would like to block out. Then click the “Save Break” button and you’re done. You can add as many breaks to your schedule as you would like.

3. You can use various filters to create a schedule based on your needs

MyCourseScheduler makes it easy to create your schedule based on your needs using filters at the top of the home page. These filters include:

• Course status: Search for open classes only or include classes that are full, as well.
• College/school: You can narrow your search to as many or few colleges/schools around the university as you’d like.
• Session: You can look for courses in Summer A and B, but exclude Summer C classes, for instance.
• Instruction mode: You can look for in-person courses, fully online courses, or anything in between depending on your preference.
• Term: Fall, Spring or Summer.
• Academic Career: College of Medicine, Law, Graduate or Undergraduate.
• Location: If you want to narrow your search for courses to ones held only at a particular campus, select the campus(es) of your choice and deselect the rest.

4. You can see every possible schedule for the classes you select and compare them side-by-side

Once you have selected your courses and breaks, click the “Generate Schedules” button toward the bottom of the page and MyCourseScheduler will give you a list of every possible schedule to choose from based on your selections.

Then you can view each schedule individually or you can compare up to four different schedules side-by-side in order to determine which courses best fit your needs.

5. You can “lock” in specific courses to refine your possible schedules

If you’re browsing through your potential schedules and find a course that meets all of your criteria, you can click on the small lock symbol right there on the schedule to help narrow your search.

Once you “lock” that course, close the schedule to return to the home page and then click the “Generate Schedule” button again and the system will generate new combinations.

Once you’ve found all the courses you would like to take and finalized your schedule for the semester, click on the “view” link for that schedule. At the top of that schedule’s page, click on the “Send Schedule to Shopping Cart” button to send the courses to your MyFIU shopping cart.

From there, when you go to enroll for classes on MyFIU, you can import the schedule you generated with MyCourseScheduler and proceed to enroll for each course.

For more in-depth instructions on how to use MyCourseScheduler to enroll for classes, go to the MyCourseScheduler student manual.

PAY FOR CLASSES ON YOUR PHONE

In addition to MyCourseScheduler, students now have the capability of paying tuition and fees on their smartphones and tablets.

The new Make a Payment feature, which can be accessed through the FIU Mobile app, aims to make the process of paying for classes easier for students wherever they might be.

“The ultimate goal is to provide better, more streamlined services for our students through the use of mobile devices,” said Carlos Varona, director of Administrative Systems and Enterprise Web Services in the Division of Information Technology. “Because FIU Mobile is available anytime and anywhere, students no longer need to access a laptop or desktop in order to make payments.”

Once you open the FIU Mobile app on your smartphone or tablet, click on the MyFIU icon and log in using your Panther ID and password. If you have any outstanding charges or a balance, it will be displayed under the ‘Finances’ section. After pressing the ‘Finances’ button, select ‘Make a Payment’ and follow the on-screen instructions.