For college students, scheduling classes each semester over a period of four years can be a daunting task, especially when the tools that are supposed to aid them are not user friendly and the information they need is fragmented across various websites. Since many students at UVa encounter this problem each semester, the mission of this project is to design and implement a system or method that streamlines the scheduling process and aids students in managing course progression across their entire four years at college.
There are many flaws with current system that students are using to schedule classes and manage course progression. One of the main issues with the system is the lack of a solid and consistent structure for conveying information related to course progression, such as requirements and areas of concentrations across the different majors. This information is currently dispersed across various websites, including SIS and the individual department sites for different majors, and is organized differently in most of those locations. Furthermore, there is no centralized tool that UVa students can use to visually organize their schedules, which is important not only for determining their weekly schedules, but also for creating a course progression outline for their remaining semesters. These complications in the current system all contribute to making the scheduling process time consuming and stressful, which is not ideal for students who could be using this time for more productive activities.
In order to ensure the effectiveness of the prospective solution to the problems of the current system, some key characteristics need to be addressed. Because the problem of scheduling is applicable to a majority of the students at UVa, the administered solution needs to be widely and easily accessible. In addition, to provide students with the information they need, the solution needs to be constantly updated at regular intervals and checked for accuracy. Because this information is essentially already available, albeit in a very disorganized and chaotic manner, the solution needs to arrange it in a manner that is both intuitive and customizable. Finally, considering that the problem is multifaceted, the solution should attempt to implement multiple functional components in order to address all of them.