From a Spreadsheet to CourseTracker

The university commissions a new application, CourseTracker. It gives each student a view of their own course history, similar to the spreadsheet, but the data comes from a shared database that draws on the university’s information systems.

CourseTracker also allows administrators to manage the shared information. They can create and update courses, schedule offerings, assign professors, and associate courses with degree requirements, among other things.

CourseTracker is not a registration system. Students do not use it to reserve a seat, join a waitlist, pay tuition, or receive a grade. It is also not a complete degree-audit system. It shows the degree requirements associated with courses, but it does not count those against a program’s graduation rules. It does not decide, for example, whether a student may count one course toward several requirements or whether every graduation rule has been met.

Before we can design CourseTracker, we need to understand the requirements. Here is a list of the functional requirements for the first release of CourseTracker:

• CourseTracker must allow a student to search the shared course catalog by course number or title.
• When a student selects a scheduled offering, CourseTracker must allow the student to add that offering to their course history.
• When a student requests their course history, CourseTracker must list the offerings they recorded, grouped by term.
• For each recorded offering, CourseTracker must show the course number, title, credits, subject area, professor’s name and email address, meeting time, and room.
• For each recorded course, CourseTracker must show the degree requirements currently associated with that course.
• CourseTracker must allow an administrator to create and update catalog courses.
• CourseTracker must allow an administrator to create a scheduled offering for a course and assign its term, professor, meeting time, and room.
• CourseTracker must allow an administrator to update a professor’s name or email address.
• CourseTracker must allow an administrator to create degree requirements and associate courses with them.
• CourseTracker must not record a student’s history entry for a scheduled offering that does not exist.