POWER SEARCHING
Power searching is possible from the OU online enrollment page at https://enroll.ou.edu/ On this page, If you look on the right hand of the tool bar on the top of the enrollment page, there is the phrase “Power Search.” Clicking this button / phrase will cause the power search dialogue box to open.
Power searching allows students to search all of the courses offered during one semester on one of OU campuses by various selection categories.
For instance, you may want to take another course with your favorite instructor, but don’t want to search through every course offering to find out what that professor is teaching. With power searching, you can just enter their name and all the courses they are teaching that semester at that campus will be listed for you.
Power searching is also an excellent way to determine whether or not a course meets a general ed requirement.
For instance, you may be anxious to fill your math requirement after taking your math placement test. You know that some math classes meet the math requirement, but you’ve also heard that courses offered through the department of economics, philosophy or psychology that also can meet the math requirement. Once you have chosen the correct semester and campus on the logon page go to the enrollment page and click the power search button. Power searching on the math category under the gen ed requirements will provide you with all the courses that meet the gen ed math requirement during a given semester on a selected campus.
Perhaps an advisor has told you that you need to fill your Upper Division “humanities” requirement. The humanities have been divided into three separate categories: “Western Culture,” “Non-western culture,” and “Artistic forms.” Again, you can search on any one of these three categories to find out which courses that meet the WC NWC & AF requirements are offered during a given semester.
Although you can search on the category of Science, power searching does not divide science courses into Biological and Physical (although it does divide them into with lab and without lab). Sciences in the following departments: BOT, HSS, MBIO &/or ZOO meet the Biological science requirement and sciences from ASTR, CHEM GEOG, GEOL, GPHY, METR &/or PHYS meet the physical science requirement. Unfortunately, when you power search, there is only a “Science” category and it is not broken down into the Arts & Sciences’ division of Biological / Physical.
Another way to check what requirements a course meets is on the enrollment page, once you have selected a department to search. On the right hand side of the page for each course is a “Codes” column. The letters written in green under the “codes” are indicative of a Gen Ed requirement being met (“AF” for “Artistic Forms”, “WC” for “Western Culture” and “NWC” for “Non Western Culture” “SS” means social science, “MTH” indicates Math and so on).
