Visit MappingBuddy: https://mappingbuddy.netlify.app/
Tools used: HTML5, CSS, JavaScript with jQuery
What-If Degree Progress Report and Academic Handbook provided by SMU do not provide the capabilities for students to map their academic journey. The existing tools are unintuitive and require students to check disparate sources of information to effectively plan modules. This makes the planning process, even for one semester, extremely frustrating. Overall, the existing mapping process has negatively affected the Academic Mapping experience for students.
Students often feel overwhelmed, having to cross-reference and process module planning information which makes it difficult to create a comprehensive overview of their four year journey in SMU. As such, they may not explore all possible academic paths and miss opportunities to take modules they are interested before graduation. This translates to an unfulfilling academic journey, which violates a key promise by SMU that each student has the chance to chart out their own academic path.
To create a better module planning experience, our team created MappingBuddy which is an integrated web application academic planning tool. MappingBuddy’s main features include a Kanban board, which serves as a visual planning dashboard.
Students will have a four year overview of their journey in SMU, and the drag-and -drop feature allows them to explore various paths to clear their graduation requirements and explore career interests. As students map their modules, they can refer to recommendations generated based on their interests, in-demand skills. As students plan, MappingBuddy helps to validate their choices, prompting them to add pre-requisites as needed, ensuring that they are able to map out a path that suits them and is permitted by the school.