Inspiration
Registering for classes right now is a major pain. Trying to find which teacher is best for a class or which particular GE's were the most helpful is a pain-staking process as individual ratemyprofessor pages must be visited and comments scanned for information. Now, the information is centralized on a single site, with comments and course information integrated.
What it does
RateMyClass gives the grade distributions and comments for particular classes, and lets you know if you should take the class. You can differentiate between teachers and classes, and read comments left by other users to learn more about the classes themselves.
How we built it
We used Flask and Bootstrap as frameworks to build the website and stored all of the data in MySQL servers. We also used python scripts to download and parse data for easy storage in the MySQL databases.
Challenges we ran into
We couldn’t figure out how to get the website on an online server, and since we had very little SQL knowledge before the hackathon, we had to learn all of it on the fly. Also, it was difficult to find publicly available data that was formatted in such a way to enable a straightforward method of web parsing, since some universities have private APIs that have access granted on a case-by-case basis.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We built a working website that can store and organize a huge amount of data and display it in a format that is easily searchable by department. The platform also allows students to supply their own input about classes, which can then be viewed by other students.
What we learned
We learned how to implement a MySQL server to store data, as well as using university data to find which classes are statistically easier. We also learned to use Bootstrap and Flask to design websites with Python.
What's next for RateMyClass
- Adding in information from more schools - but this requires contacting each one for the data
- Ability to see how degree requirements are fulfilled
- A more formalized rating system that integrates comments with the historical grades
- Make graphics so the data is presented much more nicely.
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