sddec21-04 • Electronic Program of Study (POS) Form

This theme uses "root" links to dependencies and assets (CSS, JS, images, etc.). Place all theme files and directories at the root of your web server for this page to render as intended.

Senior Design Team sddec21-04 • Electronic Program of Study (POS) Form

Project Problem Statement

Every year, first-year students and transfer students in ECpE have to take the orientation course SE/EE/CPRE 166. A part of this course involves creating a four-year plan in the form of a Program of Study. In the past, this has been accomplished with Excel spreadsheets are a hassle to grade and create.

This project aims to create a Web Application designed to make, modify, and grade a Program of Study. The web application will be designed with features for all types of students, giving them multiple ways to view and create a POS. Students will have the ability to share the POS with their academic advisor for assistance on changes and decisions like adding a minor, graduating early, double major, or even getting a Master's degree.

Current Approach

Electronic Program of Study (Link to project available on ISU network/VPN)

We have developed an interacive program of study at the link above, for in-depth information on how to use the website view out final report under Documents>Project Documentation.

The link above takes the user to the login page where they have the option to login or create account

The sign up page asks the student for username and password, we recomend the students use their netids

Here is the Student home page with an example of a student who has all the required courses of the Software Engineering Degree

Students should set their name and informaiton using the Edit profile link on their homepage

This is the home page for advisors where they can view schedules by students full name, and check their schedules against computing degree progeams

491 Prototype Approach

This is the current method of creating the four-year POS in the SE 166 course. As you can see, it is just a large Excel file. Each student has to type in all their courses manually and will have to use external tools to find prerequisites, elective courses, minor information, and more. Once the student is done with their flowchart, it is passed on to the instructor, who manually checks completeness, accuracy, and plausibility. This approach requires a lot of manual and tedious work for both students and instructors. Our goal is to reduce this work so that students can more clearly establish a four-year plan, and communicate more efficiently with instructors/advisors about their plan.

Prototype photos

There are links to clearer photos in Documents>Design Documents

List view of a four year plan

Some students learn more efficiently with lists and text; thus, we will design one version of the application in a list-centric view. This page is showing what one semester of their four-year plan could look like. They can see the degree requirements on the right side of the screen, with academic advisor feedback.

Graphical (flowchart) view of four year plan

In our experiences with students, we have found some prefer a more visual design like a flowchart. In our project, an alternative for the list-centric view would be this interactive flowchart syle. Both versions of the application will function identically, each designed for a different type of learner. The following three images are showing some of the additional functions of the graphical view.

Example of warning due to a selection violating the catalog requirements

Our application will give users a warning if their course picks violate a course catalog rule. Some of the issues the application will check are missing degree requirements, out-of-order course selection (taking a class before the prereq), too many credits in a semester, unneeded courses, and more. The example shown above is taking a course before taking all the prereqs. We know that students often don't strictly follow the ideal plan and can usually find exceptions for one thing or another. These warnings will only be a visual indication that something is incorrect with the catalog, and a student can suppress each one if they have an exception.

Adding a course in the Graphical view

This is an example of one way a student can see more information on a course. If you search for a course, they would be able to view a popup showing a description and the requirements. The app will also display a helpful diagram containing all the requirements visually. This feature gives students an example of how you can fit a course into a flow chart with all the requirements.

Clicking on a course to view more information

Another way of viewing course information is to click on the course and look to the bottom right gray box. All the course elements can be picked up drag-and-drop style into other semesters, with the prereq arrows following the course.

Entity Relationship Diagram for backend database

This ER diagram is how we will first develop the database tables and is a way for us to visualize the work we have accomplished on the back end of the project