The timetable tool is one of the most widely used tools for students in the Faculty of Arts and Science. It provides a well documented database of all the course offerings for specific terms, as well as provide a tool for students to informally draft timetables. However, the tool has many design problems that makes it difficult to use. It's User Interface is not very user-friendly, as well as it is limited in the functionalities that it provides outside of search and planning. It is also restrictive to only the Faculty of Arts and Science, which restricts user pool to only Arts and Science Students. In this project, we hope to provide a new design for a timetable tool that can resolve some issues found in timetable tool and expand it to all faculties within the University of Toronto (within the scope of the CourseFinder).
A basic functions that the tool should have is a storage system for timetables. It should support holding timetables for multiple semesters with a minimum of storing 2 timetables (one for fall, and one for winter).
It should also be able to store course information such as
- Course Name
- Time
- Section Code
- Location
- Professor/Instructor
- Delivery Methods
- Term (F/S/Y)
- Faculty Offering
It needs to be able to search for course times and add (and remove) to the timetable from a data source. It should have a user interface that is easy to use and understand for the user, while efficiently displaying all the useful information that the student needs.
The scope of the design is a program that is able to display and plan for all
the courses offered at the University of Toronto that are accounted for on
the Course Finder.
There should also be some additional functions added to the tool, such as a
DfsSolver to automatically plot out a timetable or an Agenda to keep track
of all the student's course material. They shall be added on a case-by-case
basis iff the time allows.