RateMyDukeProfessor

Inspiration

One of the most tedious and frustrating tasks when choosing classes is trying to determine the quality of the professor. Thus, we sought to simplify the process by providing a method to easily contrast the ratings and reviews of the professor that teach a certain course. This will allow students to bookbag with ease and have more confidence in the courses they choose.

What it does

RateMyDukeProfessor works by accessing the Duke.OIT Course Catalog API. With a user-promoted course subject and course number (Ex. Computer Science 201), the program returns each section of that specific course and which professor teaches it. With this information, we query the website RateMyProfessor and relay back the rating, difficulty, and comments. This essentially allows any student to easily differentiate between all the professors who teach a course, providing quantifiable data to make a more informed decision.

How we built it

This program was built entirely in VS Code, with the back-end code written in JavaScript and front-end code developed in HTML and CSS. The backend first quires the Duke.OIT Course Catalog API using two user-prompted inputs: Course Subject and Course Number. The information returned, once sorted and analyzed, provides the name of each professor in each section of that specific class. With that information, we query a RateMyProfessor API that returns the ratings and reviews for each professor in the section.

Challenges we ran into

Given that this was the first-ever Hackathon for a majority of the team, there were many technical issues with hosting and API integration that bogged us down. Additionally, time constraints really limited the scope of what we were able to do, as we had much more ambitious plans for this program that planned to implement major/minor course requirements and even recommend courses.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Even completing the program and successfully integrating the APIs and back-end and front-end code was impressive for us. Also, the idea and concept of this program is very applicable and could be widely used by many students at Duke, so we are proud to help the Duke community.

What we learned

Hackathons, while immensely tiring, are a lot of fun. It was also a very enlightening experience as to what software and web development entail for undergraduates who have had no previous experience in the field.

What's next for RateMyDukeProfessor API

The next step for RateMyDukeProfessor is integrating the API into an easy-to-use website interface that allows students to easily access information and display's the professor's reviews and ratings in a categorical and digestible manner. Afterward, by using major/minor course requirements, RateMyDukeProfessor could provide a list of the best-rated professors and show which are the best classes for a specific major.