Gopher Grades V2 Hall Plotter

Overview

Each semester as students register for classes one of the more overlooked aspects of registration is the location of the classes. This is especially true for students who are new to the University of Minnesota or students who have to travel large distances between classes in short periods of time. Gopher Grades V2 Hall Plotter is a new feature to the Gopher Grades V2 extension that allows students to visualize the location of their classes on a map.

Development

The Hall Plotter feature works by injecting a script into the Schedule Builder page that scrapes the locations of each class by utilizing the Schedule Builder API. Since this API is not documented, a majority of research was done by inspecting the network requests made by the Schedule Builder page. Once the locations of each class are obtained, the script then references a constant sheet of building locations and their coordinates to plot each class on a map. The extension creates a new tab in the Schedule Builder page that contains this map and allows users to even export their route to Google Maps.

Outcome

Overall this extension was positively recieved by everyone at Social Coding and is slated for release in version 2.0.0 of the extension. It's anticipated that this tool will greatly improve the schedule building experience and quality of life for students at the University of Minnesota.