Inspiration- Currently there are numerous UMSL calendars that all have different events, but there is no single calendar to find out everything that is going at UMSL on a given day. This makes it very difficult to get involved in the UMSL community since the calendars are contained on numerous websites. Currently, a student must know what they are looking for if they are going to find it on the current set up since they have to know which website to go to first. Once this unified calendar is on the main website, students will be able to see everything, which will allow students to learn about events they previously would have never known were happening.
What it does - This project unifies all UMSL's calendars in to one solid calendar so that students can instantly see everything that is going on in a given day, or all month. This will allow students to stay informed about UMSL events, whether they are sporting events, club events, academic events, or events set up by any college at UMSL.
How we built it - To build this unified calendar we used FullCalendar.io, an open source javascript calendar and drew numerous UMSL calendars into it using mainly JQuery.
Challenges we ran into - One of the main challenges we ran into with this project was team communication and dedication. We had a team member who showed up for about 2 hours each day which lead to a little bit of dissension among the other members. We also had one team member who had much more experience in the programming world who got frustrated that some of the other team members could not work on some of these things at his pace.
Accomplishments that we're proud of - Working as a team to overcome obstacles despite the large disparity in technical knowledge among teammates.
What we learned - this project gave us plenty of room for learning since none of us were familiar with JQuery before we began. There was also a lot of learning. In addition to this we learned a lot about UMSL itself since none of the team was aware how many calendars and how many events UMSL actually has.
What's next for UMSL unified calendar - this calendar could use more aesthetic appeal and then should be moved to the main UMSL website where it could be viewed daily by students who are looking to get involved at UMSL. Another option for improvement is to add filters so that students only have to see the events they are interested in.
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