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Streamline searching for CS courses, course schedules, and professor reviews in one easily accessible platform. Find relevant courses, read reviews, and plan your schedule efficiently. Enter the world of Computer Science Search (CSS).
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Brett Hlavinka and Chris Aikens Computer Science Search
Imagine… • You’re a CSCE Junior about to start upper-level courses • You’re frustrated with howdy and its uselessness • You don’t want to pay simply to look up professor reviews • You want to find courses you have an interest in
Sources of Information • Course information is spread across many sources • howdy • Course schedules • myEdu (formerly PickaProf) • Grade distributions and reviews • CS Department website • Course descriptions
Search Problems • Searching through courses is limited • howdy • Limit results with advanced search filters • myEdu (formerly PickaProf) • Course number or professor’s name • CS Department website • No searching
Motivation • Problem: Cannot easily determine which courses you want to take • Solution: A consolidated, searchable website for CS courses • View course schedules • Search over descriptions and reviews • Be free of charge • Enter Computer Science Search (CSS)
Related Work • MyEdu • Grade distributions and professor ratings/reviews • Starting at $10 a year
Related Work • Stanford’s Course Rank • Search, Review, Schedule, and Plan • Can be adopted by other universities
Related Work • AgProfessors.com • Course/professor grade distributions and reviews • Texas A&M specific (and free of charge)
Related Work • Summary • All related works incorporated good ideas • Searching • Reviews • Course Descriptions • Try to integrate related works and our own ideas • Idea: make a course search site specific to Texas A&M that helps students build their schedule • Should be easy to use and allow students to retrieve information
Methods Used • Scope: make the site CSCE only with static content to start • Collected course info • MyEdu reviews as base (plus some original) • Store various fields relevant to courses in an XML file • Use Digester to parse the XML file • Use Lucene to allow the user to search over courses and reviews
Demo • Search for Course Number 470 • Search for Name Hurley • Search for Time MWF • Search for All “Database” • Search for All “Aggies Roolz” • Browse by Number • Browse by Prof
Scenario 1 • Information need: retrieve relevant information for taking CSCE – 410 • AgProfessors: Search finds course and gives grade distributions • MyEdu: Search finds course and tells grade distributions and has professor reviews • CSS: Search finds course and gives general information about the course
Scenario 2 • Information need: retrieve relevant courses to the search “scheduling and memory allocation” • Try to find course that covers this material • Hope to find CSCE – 410 • AgProfessors and MyEdu fall short here • This is the reason behind CSS • The search returns CSCE – 410
Evaluation • All the searchable sites have useful information, the user needs to decide their information need • Grade Distributions • Professor Reviews • Course Scheduling/Reviews • CSS was made to find courses from a general search • We did not expect the other sites to perform well in this area
Analysis • Student values a site that is essentially all in one package • Stanford’s Course Rank has all the features that any student would need when constructing a course schedule • Search capability • Reviews • Built in scheduling • Planning
Conclusions • There is an obvious absence of searchable course listings • CSS is a site designed for finding courses you want • CSS could be further developed to implement more features • Writing reviews • Grade distributions • Course recommendations
Conclusions • Information should be consolidated • CSS is a consolidated site, combining course listings with searchable descriptions and reviews • Reduces time retrieving information, as well as the hassle of doing so