University technicians have taken steps to alleviate problems plaguing the new and improved CourseWork system, Director of Academic Computing Lois Brooks told The Daily in an email last Friday. The site, which allows students to access course information and materials online, underwent a significant overhaul this summer, but some of the site’s regular features have been slow and inefficient despite the updates.

“The specific issue causing the problem with CourseWork was the number of simultaneous logins,” Brooks said in reference to complaints about the site during the past two weeks. “When hundreds of students and faculty tried to login at once, CourseWork could not manage the load needed to verify users and present the right information.”

This increased traffic strained the system beyond capacity, preventing many students from logging on to view assignments and register for sections.

“One time I couldn’t sign up for my section class,” said Ari Weiss ‘11, “and another it was so slow I could not view my homework.”

“During the first couple of days, I once spent the whole night trying to load the page, and it would continuously time out,” said Ana Hernandez ‘11. “For instance, for my Econ 1A class, the assignment had been posted on Coursework and I was unable to retrieve it.”

Irritation with the site extended to faculty as well.

“CourseWork was not working at the start of the term, which was very frustrating,” said Philosophy Prof. Alexis Burgess.

Responding to these complaints, the CourseWork team “made several changes overnight to allow more users to login at the same time,” Brooks said.

“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience to students and faculty,” she added.

Although the implementation of the new system has been attended by problems, an upgrade for Coursework — which is used by approximately 900 classes and 12,000 faculty and students each quarter — was long overdue.

“The aging software was increasingly difficult to maintain and keep running,” said Brooks, who mentioned that the bulk of the CourseWork application was written in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Despite early difficulties, the revised site offers many new features to users. A “Drop Box” tool allows students to post homework assignments and faculty members to hand back commented papers with ease.

While technicians continue to improve current problems, both students and faculty do appreciate aspects of the site.

“I find it extremely useful, especially in my metaphysics class where students don’t even need to buy a course reader,” Burgess said. “All the material is posted online.”