If you are a current student then you know how much it is a pain to see that a section you wanted to get into for a class is full. Well with eLion’s new feature, the Course Watch List, your troubles may be over. According to Penn State Live, eLion is getting an upgrade on Friday.

Quote from the Penn State Live Story:

This application will provide students with the opportunity to be notified when a seat opens in a full section of a course. Students will indicate the course sections they wish to watch and may be notified of an open seat via a Penn State e-mail account and/or a text message to a mobile phone. Students may attempt to schedule the section through the normal avenues.

This is a big step in the right direction. Sites like Course Sniper give users this service but for a price. For each course you wanted to monitor, you would have to pay close to 10 dollars for. With eLion’s new / free service, you will be destroying Course Sniper’s user base in Penn State.

To try the new demo, go to the following link: http://eliondemo.oas.psu.edu/ The feature is based off of the Drop / Add design.

Tutorial:

1. Just pick Students from the Login Menu and it will be the last link in the C Category.
2. After clicking the link, you will be picking how you want to be notified about the course. This can be email or text message. Save your preferences.
3. Choose what semester you want to watch over
4. Now you will be into the main Watch List area. Here you can add or remove courses on your watch list just like you would if you were adding or dropping a course. You add the course via the 6 digit schedule number from the Schedule of Courses site.

Once the course is added to the watch list it will show you the following information:

I feel that the Students Watching section may be useful because it gives you an idea of how many people are interested in the class and whether you have a shot at getting in if someone drops it.

Of course, when actual people start using this flaws may become apparent, but as of now, what do you think? Will this be a useful tool for creating the perfect schedule?