bthoRegistration

Inspiration

Class scheduling and registration is always a painful process for TAMU students. It's common to see one student have up to 20 tabs open between RateMyProfessor, Howdy, and AggieScheduler and MORE just to find out that a class is closed, classes conflict, or that everything gets lost in the confusion. Luckily, that's where bthoRegistration comes in! We take care of all the hard work in the backend amassing thousands of data points from the A&M system, analyzing that data, and providing students the easy ability to comprehensively research future classes and optimized recommendations based on priorities such as increasing GPA or focusing on learning.

What it does

bthoRegistration makes it easier for students to create and research class schedules through a Google Chrome extension that seamlessly integrates into the proprietary TAMU Class Search Page. bthoRegistration shows historical grade distributions for different professors and automatically generates links to RateMyProfessor webpages. This important data coupled with the fact that bthoRegistration integrates into the existing Aggie Class Schedule System makes bthoRegistration second to none.

How we built it

The most important piece behind this project is the historical data for classes and grade distributions. We spent a lot of time creating a data sourcing and processing pipeline from TAMU's official website. We used Azure to run proprietary python code that navigated the depths of Aggie hell and stored the data in a SQL database. We then created a Chrome extension using html, css, and js that relies on the data we used to generate charts of previous grade distributions, according to class and professor along with other pertinent links.

Challenges we ran into

Figuring out how to scrape/clean massive amounts of grade data from pdf files into text into json then into one big database file. Learning how to make a Chrome extension for the first time. Figuring out how to integrate into the TAMU class search page with a Chrome extension.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For 3/4 of our team, this was our first hackathon! We're proud of creating an advanced data processing pipeline and learning how to make a Chrome extension!

What we learned

-Chrome Extensions -Azure -Lots of HTML/JS

What's next for bthoRegistration

Creating a user interface that allows students to input their needed courses & preferred class times that will generate a list of CRNs or hypothetical class schedules best suited for a student's needs. Using machine learning to recognize grade patterns across classes on degree plans. Then using this to predict future grades in classes based on user-inputted previous grades. Integrating RateMyProfessor database into recommended course output.