UMD Course Tracker

Inspiration: Our inspiration for creating this app came from our own experience as freshmen struggling to navigate the complicated process of selecting courses. It can be overwhelming and confusing to figure out which classes to take and how to plan out your four years at UMD. We knew that we weren't the only ones feeling this way and we wanted to create a solution that could help our fellow students.

We put our heads together and used our innovative skills to design an app that simplifies the course selection process. With our app, students can easily see all the available courses and choose the ones that interest them. We wanted to create something that could save students time and stress, and make the whole process a little bit easier.

At the end of the day, our inspiration comes from wanting to help our fellow UMD students. We know how challenging the course selection process can be, and we believe that our app has the potential to make a real difference. By streamlining the process and providing a user-friendly platform, we hope to make it easier for students to plan their academic journey and make the most of their time at UMD.

What it does: Users are presented a list of courses, which are nested under drop-downs that are labeled with which gen-eds the courses under the drop-down satisfy. Users can then add the gen-ed courses they’re interested in and see how many credits and which gen-ed requirements they’re working towards.

How we built it: Our project was built using the umd.io API to retrieve comprehensive information about the classes required for our Gen-Ed program. After successfully accessing and parsing the data, we moved on to the crucial step of designing an intuitive and user-friendly interface that would allow us to select the courses we wanted to take, keep track of our progress, and view the credits we had fulfilled.

Using React, we were able to create a dynamic and responsive front-end that seamlessly integrated with our API data. We utilized various HTML and CSS elements to customize the appearance of our application, while ensuring that it remained accessible and easy to navigate for all users.

One of the key design features of our project was the division of the interface into three distinct sections. The first section was a comprehensive list of all the gen ed courses available to us, complete with details such as course descriptions, prerequisites, and scheduling information. The second section was a personalized list of the courses we had selected, which allowed us to keep track of our progress towards fulfilling our degree requirements. Finally, the third section was a visual representation of the credits we had completed, which provided us with a clear and concise overview of our academic standing.

Throughout the development process, we remained focused on creating a project that was both practical and aesthetically pleasing. We paid close attention to the user experience, conducting extensive testing and gathering feedback to ensure that our project met the needs of our target audience. By combining our technical skills with our design sensibilities, we were able to build a project that we are proud to showcase.

Challenges we ran into: Working with new technologies and language components presented a significant challenge for us during the hackathon project. Learning how to integrate our HTML code into React components, and integrating an API into our application was a steep learning curve. One of the biggest challenges we faced was updating the Gen-Ed requirements as the user selected courses.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: Despite being new to these technologies, we are extremely proud of the accomplishments we achieved during the hackathon project. With our combined skills, we were able to create a user-friendly application that streamlines the course selection process for UMD students.

One of our greatest achievements was learning how to use an API to filter and manipulate data. This was a new skill for all of us, and we were thrilled to successfully incorporate it into our project. Additionally, we were able to leverage our previous experience with HTML and CSS to build a strong foundation for our project, and we expanded our knowledge by learning and implementing React.

The end result is a project that we're extremely proud of, and we hope it will be a valuable resource for our fellow UMD students for years to come.

What we learned: We learned how to utilize React in order to simplify the complex functionality of a web application, and we learned how to connect that knowledge with using an API that consisted of comprehensive data on UMD courses. We then performed specific operations on this data to extract what we needed in order to display it on the site. Regarding the look of the site, we learned how to use different CSS properties so that the site would appear well-organized and clear to any viewers.

What's next for UMD Course Tracker: In the future, we plan to create a search feature to build on the front end of UMD Course Tracker. This search feature will allow the user to find exactly which course they are looking for. We can also add additional details to the courses so that the user has an idea of what they can register for. Thinking longer term we can allow users to send feedback on the courses they take and we can utilize artificial intelligence to recommend courses that people should take. In addition, we believe we can further develop this application so it works for a multitude of majors and their courses.