The Personal Schedule – 2 steps forward, 1 step back

Good news everyone, we finally have a personalized schedule for all students and the faculty! My excitement, however, lasted as long as I did not actually see it. Don’t get me wrong, the schedule is a really nice tool. Yet, the layout and functionality make me want to have back the good old excel sheet telling me my group and tutor (name) explicitly at one glance.

I know we just started with the schedule and there is (hopefully) going to be some improvement. To my mind, a parallel strategy should have been followed: Introduce the personalized schedule, while still posting the old schedule as an Excel sheet. Once the personalized schedule works as it should the Excel sheet can be abandoned.

Just have a look at the picture and spot the mistakes. Okay, so, although the time is stated in the lower right corner of every box, the box does not extend to the right time, but always misses a quarter of an hour. Further, it is great that you tell me the week number (25/26), but who honestly looks at the week number?! I need a date, because I make my plans according to specific dates, not the week.

When using the “Course Timetables” (see picture), I can see all the different tutorials, but only few of mine. What is purpose of this view? And in “My timetable” I have to select week by week. Well, enjoy doing that when you have 8 weeks of classes!

Okay, so let’s say I would like to print the schedule. In Opera 9.27 I cannot even see half of my schedule – even when using the Print View, because the upper frame uses about 50% of the page. In Firefox 2.0.0.14, the individual SCREEN VERSION is better than the PRINT VERSION for printing, because it displays the schedule magnified. Using the Internet Explorer and printing only the selected frame, the view of the timetable is adequate. However, the text is so small that in order to read it, I would have to print a poster.

You can choose between three Start and End times when displaying your schedule. But if all my classes are from 13.30 – 15.30, I could not care less about having no classes between 8.00 – 13.30 and between 15.30 – 18.00. Why doesn’t the schedule only show me the timeframe of my classes? An Excel export feature would also be nice. We would also appreciate different colors for distinct classes.

This project is still in its infancy; I am aware of that. I am also aware of the fact that it takes time to implement changes and that it took a lot of effort to develop this schedule. However, if the project is still in beta status, then please do not discard the old schedule format immediately.