

Review my Prototype: Course Scheduler for Students - snprbob86

The prototype can be found at:<p>http://www.brandonbloom.name/static/scheduler/scheduler.html<p>Clickable link in the comments.<p>This is a tool to help college students make a class schedule. Amazingly, this is a relatively unsolved problem for most universities. I've been kicking this idea around for a long time, but only recently had the Javascript chops to pull it off.<p>I'm aware of a number of bugs and the code could use some cleanup, but it should work in the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox as well as mostly work in Internet Explorer 8. Despite prototype status, I still welcome bug reports, visual and usability design feedback, grand ideas, etc. Hell, feel free to read the source and critique it if you like :-)<p>One significant problem is the school-individualized data required for this tool to be useful. I suspect that it will be difficult to convince schools to provide the data, even though it is already public and even if I make the tool entirely free. I've considered crowd sourcing, but fear low tolerance for incompleteness and inaccuracies. I'm also considering spidering the data, as well as publishing Specs/APIs for others to provide the data. Any suggestions regarding obtaining course data are greatly appreciated.<p>Thanks!
Brandon Bloom
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snprbob86
Clickable: <http://www.brandonbloom.name/static/scheduler/scheduler.html>

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trun
A similar app for scheduling at MIT if you're looking for grand inspiration.

<http://pickr.mit.edu/>

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snprbob86
I'd love to try it out, but I'm getting Javascript errors in both Firefox and
Chrome. The app permanently says "Working..." :-(

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trun
Hmm yea it looks like it's auto logging in via certificate. Doesn't work
without the cert though. Sorry.

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snprbob86
Interesting:
[http://opendata.mit.edu/~opendata/www/index.php?title=OpenDa...](http://opendata.mit.edu/~opendata/www/index.php?title=OpenData:Community_Portal)

Initially, the data appears to be behind lock and key, but the XML formatted
data is available. Is that information intentionally locked away and the XML a
leak? Or is everything protected by default, so to speak?

This would be a great starting point for data, but MIT is one school probably
_least_ in need of such a new scheduler tool :-)

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atambo
Here's one of the more popular CMU schedulers: <https://scheduleman.org/>

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snprbob86
Ah, another CS-heavy school :-)

This one also seems to require certificates and a university account. That's a
shame, I'd like to try it. The browse/search seems nice.

