CourseWise
This year, my project is inspired by the academic fair, and I want to make a more functional, convenient, and thorough product.
As a junior, I have attended the SHC academic fair twice. It is advertised as a place where you learn all about the classes you will take in the coming years, where teachers give presentations about the class and pitch it to you. The issue with the academic fair is that it only happens once a year, but teachers’ presentations (only about 10 minutes) are generic and only focused on the class content. A lot of the things presented in the AP Calculus AB academic fair, for example, can be found on the AP Central description by CollegeBoard online. During COVID, the school came out for the virtual academic fair. On paper, this is a great concept; it is open to students all year round and can be edited easily. However, the virtual academic fair actually brought up new issues. Most prominently, it is outdated and often inaccurate. For example, the APCSA video on the virtual academic fair website was made by a teacher who no longer teaches at SHC, and the class has changed dramatically since the video was made. In addition, the website is missing a couple of electives, and the descriptions still only focus on the class from a content and teacher perspective.
My proposed solution to these issues is an actively updated website that displays a description of each class but with a unique twist. This description will be based solely on student opinions, putting their needs and perspectives at the forefront. CourseWise is not meant to replace the academic fair; instead, I hope it becomes a tool that students can use alongside the information displayed in the virtual and in-person academic fair. I want to display information like the frequency of projects, common misperceptions of a class, the productivity in class, etc. The only way to access this information right now is through word of mouth or finding an upperclassman who previously took that class. With CourseWise, students no longer have to hunt for information themselves because the genuine opinions of the student body for each course can be conveniently displayed in one place.
I am currently using Google Forms and Google Sheets to collect and sort my data, and I am using Wix to build my website. I hope to survey as much of the student body as possible, consolidate their submissions, and display them all in one place, each class having a page. The website is laid out with a home page and a menu with the different departments (math, social studies, science, etc.), and hovering over those reveals the departments’ classes. You can then click on the link of the course, and it takes you to that course’s page, with all of the data neatly displayed. My survey has been sent out to a small part of the student body, and I prioritize making the pages based on which course has the most responses. As of April 2024, I don’t have enough responses to make an accurate opinion page for each course offered at SHC. However, as I continue to expand the range of CourseWise, I hope to eventually get enough responses for that result.
