Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 19:34:32 GMT Server: Apache/1.1.1 Content-type: text/html Content-length: 4728 Last-modified: Thu, 12 May 1994 22:17:00 GMT Rationale for Weekly Schedule

Rationale for Weekly Schedule


This is the rationale page for the Weekly Schedule feature of the registration system.

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Issue: Should the student's registration home page contain a weekly class schedule?

Summary

Scheduling issues are much more complicated for undergraduates than graduates. Undergraduate students are typically taking four or more classes, each of which may have several possible sections. It is important for them to see which classes conflict with which, and what their final schedule would look like. Graduate students take only two classes, and Ph.D. students in their research phase may take none at all. For graduate students, it is easy to detect and avert scheduling conflicts.


Position (Chosen): Yes.

Stakeholders

Conformance to Existing Standards

The current Schdule of Classes contains a worksheet for the students to plan out their weekly schedule of classes.


Position (Not chosen): Don't care.

Stakeholders

The following are graduate students. Note that there is a difference between the needs of the Ph.D. student and the Master's student.


Design Decision: The student's home page will show the schedule for all the classes he or she has registered for.

How the Decision Meets the NeedsThis design gives the undergraduate students less than they asked for. There is only one schedule, and that only shows classes which the student is formally registered for. There is no provision for the student to bring up multiple potential schedules, or view the results of possible registrations before committing to a given class. While the student is permitted to register for multiple classes in the same time slot, only the first such class is displayed on the schedule (the student will see the other class in the list of registered classes at the top of the registration home page).

This compromise was the best implementation we could do given the limitations of Mosaic.


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