I was asked a while back what is my favorite project that I’ve worked on at Valdosta State University (VSU). I’ve worked on a lot of projects at VSU, but I’d have to say my favorite is the “Schedule of Classes” module. It is the first big project I did when I started working at VSU and has been an ongoing experience ever since.

In late 2015, I was approached by the Office of the Registrar about revamping the class list module on the VSU main website. Students were starting to use the current “Class List” module more than Banner to decide on which classes they want to register for the next or active semester. Prospective students and visitors are looking at it more frequently as well to see which classes are offered before deciding to apply. Transient students also like it because it helps them plan for transient courses that their home school does not offer.

To me, the “Class List” module on the site did not look professional. The Office of the Registrar also wanted to add a few elements beyond what information is already listed. From the start, I was excited because my department was in the planning process for a site-wide template upheaval. I showed the Registrar the mock-ups for the new layout and some of the new information that we were already planning to add to his current “Class List” module. The Registrar was excited and he provided me with addition information that he wanted to see as part of the module.

I started development in Spring 2016. I updated the database infrastructure, nightly cronjob, back-end interface, and front-end interface. I addressed a few problems the current system was facing: (1) The cronjob did not delete classes that had been cancelled, causing confusion during registration. (2) It was a time-consuming chore to change out the term codes and no one in the past wanted to do it.

Since the conjob was not deleting cancelled classes in the current production version, I created a new branch in Git and added a validation for cancelled classes. I tested the validation rules and pushed it to production. I also wanted to simplify the process of changing term codes and make it so I was not the only one capable of performing this maintenance. To do this, I added a new section for changing the term codes for which terms the cronjob would run nightly and which terms would display on the site. This change saves me 30 to 45 minutes. I can also now delegate this task to the front-end developer if I’m not available.

I launched the new template pages in Fall 2016. The Registrar was very pleased with the end work. Later that year, the Registrar asked me to change the terms out and add Spring 2017 classes to the list. I made the changes and replied to him in a few short minutes. He was shocked that I replied so quickly! The Registrar called me a few days later and asked if I could update the classes more often than nightly so that the students could have more up-to-date information since it changes daily. I told him that it would be no problem and I simply set the cronjob to run hourly. The Registrar has contacted me with praise every semester I’ve updated the term codes for him since. I’m proud that he sees that I get the job completed quickly and efficiently. I have continued to add new features and information to this module since the redesign.