Inspiration
Inspired by once visiting Mudd Building after 10 and accidentally running into an empty classroom, which is perfect for group or self study. Through this project we strive to make the most of Columbia's classroom resource by making the most of empty class rooms and making the university a better study place for all students.
What it does
Our projects balance the information of classroom usage by providing to students query service of classroom usage, which includes: School-wise search for empty classrooms by entering when a student want to study; Providing class occupation information by entering a particular classroom.
How we built it
First, we used web scraping technique via Python to download and organized all the class information from Columbia University Directory of Class; Second, we imported the structured data into R studio to produce a interactive webpage developed through Shiny App in R.
Challenges we ran into
Our team is made up of four girls from Data Science focus in the program of QMSS. Our background is mostly data analysis, which means we have scaresly encountered any upstream or downstream of data analysis, which in this project, happens to be the most important parts: building a large data set scraped from internet using computationally feasible approaches; developing webpage that can be both informative and user-friendly using languages we hardly have previous experience on.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are very proud of every success and obstacle we underwent. We bravely faced engineering field and programming languages that we hardly have edge compared to all the engineering and CS students; We used our wits and group effort to quickly learned new skills sufficient for our task; Last but not least, we are proud to notice we are one of the few teams that stayed all night at Uris Library.:)
What we learned
Programming and Engineering is a tough but inspiring process. We are happy that we have friends, tutors and our skills and intelligence to rely on which makes us more willing to embrace the challenges of this field.
What's next for Columbia Classroom Resource Service
We are aware that we still have many defects and much room for improvement. For example, our data set hasn't included TC and Business School, which is important for university-wise service. Also, if time and resource supports, we can greatly improve user-surface.
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