User Profile:
Typical Users are expected to be matriculated or at least enrolled in one more classes at SUNY Oswego.
Users are familiar with courses and the basic format of Department, Course Number, Title, Professor, Time, and Location.
Users will have varying experience with computer interfaces, from beginner to expert.
Students with disabilities that prevent computer use or registration have the option of making their schedule with an employee of Disability Services.
Users could be divided by Department, Honors, Lower
Classmen, or Upper Classmen. Each will have its own special requirements, ideally
the system will be sensitive to these requirements.
Every user will have a set of requirements based on their major and general education type (or honors).
Degree requirements: BA 90 of 122 credit hours in Liberal Arts. 42 credit hours must be from 300-499 level, plus individual degree and general education requirements. Page 170-172 Student handbook.
Each student must have at least 1 major, and at most 2 majors and 1 minor.
A student must be enrolled in a minimum of 12 credit hours
to be considered full time and a maximum of 17 credit hours prior to overload
approval.
Basic properties:
Department
Course Number
Title (too error prone, requires user knowledge of course title)
Day
Time
Professor
Room
Prerequisites
Part of a requirement structure ( ie gen ed, or major)
Basic Delimiters: Mean
Score: Range: Rationale:
Specific Course 5 0 Users have specific interests and/or needs and must be able
to generate a schedule with them.
Department 4.2 1 Allows users to return less specific courses within a major
or area of interest. If complex algorithms are possible, this would allow for selecting upper level or general education courses within a major.
Day of the Week 3.6 4 Would allow the user to exclude or limit courses to a day of
the week. (see editable calendar)
Time of Day 2.8 4 Exclude or search for courses by time of day. (see editable
calendar)
Professor 2.4 3 Either exclude a professor from results, or
search for a
class taught by professor.
Category 4.2 1 Delimit searches by a category, such as General
Education>Humanities, or Natural Science, etc.
Location 3.3 3 Allows users to limit the physical location of their courses.
For example, user’s courses are all in Mahar and does not want classes in Snygg.
Number of Courses 5 0 Allows the user to indicate how many courses they would
like returned in the schedule.
Complex Delimiters:
Course Level 2 2 Allows user to delimit course by upper or lower division.
This would allow users to return upper or lower level courses in a major or general education.
Priority Weight 4 2 Allows the user to define a requirement as a “must have” or
a “would like to have”. Allows a criterion such as “no Fridays” to be over ridden by a more important requirement such as specific major required course.
Complex Algorithms 5 0 Allows users to input multiple delimiters, such as “general
education>humanities” and “upper level credit”. This way, users do not have to sift through returned results to find the humanities output that is general education.
Double Dipping 4 0 Returns courses that could for both a certain major and a
general education.
Compare vs CAPP 4 2 Checks output against courses taken to ensure that a course
the user has already taken is not returned by the scheduler.
Associating Labs with Courses Certain courses require labs with the courses, ideally, these
should be automatically assigned to the schedule should the courses be selected.
GUI/Output requirements:
Editable output 4.8 1 Allows users to select which of the returned courses they
want to keep, and which ones they wish to replace. Useful if a schedule is everything the user wants except for one or two courses.
CAPP report GUI 5 0 Allows users to see what requirements they have met and
which ones still need to be addressed. Not all users indicated that they would need to check this every time, but all indicated that it was important to have.
Calendar display 3.4 2 Time blocked out calendar to display returned results.
example, they would be able to click on time blocks to exclude them. This would give the users a more natural interaction with a calendar.
Outputable Calendar 2.2 3 Would allow the user to export the calendar to
another
calendar program such as iCal or a PDA
Calendar printable 5 0 Would allow users to print out the chosen schedule
Search/Output labels 4.5 1 Would indicate which course corresponded to which rule
returned it. This would allow users who inputted an open ended search, like “general ed” to know what course satisfied what search rule. That is to say, they would have a visual tie-in between a course and why it is there.
April target