In order to graduate, students at Ewha must pursue a specific number of credits by taking courses in the five categories: mandatory courses, English-taught courses, optional courses, core educational courses and major courses which slightly vary according to majors and the year the student enters university. However, many students are having difficulty in knowing how much credit they have achieved from which category because they do not have a system that shows them the number of remaining or achieved required credits.
Only senior students at Ewha can have a clear reference, written in numbers, through the Intranet of Ewha Portal Information System (EPIS) to which required courses they have taken. The credits an individual student achieved throughout the past semesters or the credits that have to be achieved in the future are not clearly displayed in numbers for students who wish to plan their future schedule. Denied with a system to view the written number of credits that one has already achieved or must further achieve through the EPIS, students have to check themselves if they are fulfilling the requirements.
“When it comes to students graduating from university, it is very important to clearly understand what required courses they have taken and need to take, in order to be well prepared for getting a job because students need to graduate from university in order to get a job,” said Lee Jung-min (Customer and Human Development, 4). “I have even seen a friend who had to cancel her certificate of passing the Teacher Certification Exam in special education because she miscalculated her required credits and was thus not qualified to graduate,” said Lee.
In an effort to avoid such cases, Ewha only allowed seniors, who were soon to graduate, to check the number of credits they pursued through EPIS from 2008. Park Ji-hyun, a faculty member of the Office of Academic Affairs, said that it is difficult to computerize the remaining and achieved credits of the courses students took because of Ewha’s flexible curriculum regarding courses compared to other universities. The courses that students take as double majors or minor majors can overlap with the required courses.
“However, if students wish to have access to the program of being able to see the number of achieved credits through EPIS, Ewha is planning to extend the system as soon as possible to all undergraduates,” said Park.