Computer Science Search
description
Transcript of Computer Science Search
COMPUTER SCIENCE SEARCH
Brett Hlavinka and Chris Aikens
Imagine… You’re a CSCE Junior about to start
upper-level courses You’re frustrated with howdy and
its uselessness You don’t want to pay simply to
look up professor reviews You want to find courses you have
an interest in
Sources of Information Course information is spread across
many sourceshowdy○ Course schedules
myEdu (formerly PickaProf)○ Grade distributions and reviews
CS Department website○ Course descriptions
Search Problems Searching through courses is
limitedhowdy○ Limit results with advanced search
filtersmyEdu (formerly PickaProf)○ Course number or professor’s name
CS Department website○ No searching
Motivation Problem: Cannot easily determine
which courses you want to take Solution: A consolidated,
searchable website for CS coursesView course schedulesSearch over descriptions and reviewsBe free of charge
Enter Computer Science Search (CSS)
Related Work MyEdu
Grade distributions and professor ratings/reviews
Starting at $10 a year
Related Work Stanford’s Course Rank
Search, Review, Schedule, and PlanCan be adopted by other universities
Related Work AgProfessors.com
Course/professor grade distributions and reviews
Texas A&M specific (and free of charge)
Related Work Summary
All related works incorporated good ideas○ Searching○ Reviews○ Course Descriptions
Try to integrate related works and our own ideas Idea: make a course search site specific to
Texas A&M that helps students build their scheduleShould be easy to use and allow students to
retrieve information
Methods Used Scope: make the site CSCE only with
static content to startCollected course infoMyEdu reviews as base (plus some
original) Store various fields relevant to
courses in an XML file Use Digester to parse the XML file Use Lucene to allow the user to search
over courses and reviews
Demo Search for Course Number 470 Search for Name Hurley Search for Time MWF Search for All “Database” Search for All “Aggies Roolz” Browse by Number Browse by Prof
Scenario 1 Information need: retrieve relevant
information for taking CSCE – 410 AgProfessors: Search finds course
and gives grade distributions MyEdu: Search finds course and
tells grade distributions and has professor reviews
CSS: Search finds course and gives general information about the course
Scenario 2 Information need: retrieve relevant
courses to the search “scheduling and memory allocation”Try to find course that covers this
materialHope to find CSCE – 410
AgProfessors and MyEdu fall short here
This is the reason behind CSSThe search returns CSCE – 410
Evaluation All the searchable sites have useful
information, the user needs to decide their information needGrade DistributionsProfessor ReviewsCourse Scheduling/Reviews
CSS was made to find courses from a general search
We did not expect the other sites to perform well in this area
Analysis Student values a site that is
essentially all in one package Stanford’s Course Rank has all the
features that any student would need when constructing a course scheduleSearch capabilityReviewsBuilt in schedulingPlanning
Conclusions There is an obvious absence of
searchable course listingsCSS is a site designed for finding
courses you wantCSS could be further developed to
implement more features○ Writing reviews○ Grade distributions○ Course recommendations
Conclusions Information should be consolidated
CSS is a consolidated site, combining course listings with searchable descriptions and reviews
Reduces time retrieving information, as well as the hassle of doing so
Questions?
Thank You