U of A students create course pre-requisite finder

A team of University of Alberta students have developed a course pre-requisite finder. Designed specifically for the U of A course catalog, the tool aims to streamline the course selection process for U of A students.

As students themselves, team members Benjamin Bui, Olivia Cai, Kevin Cao, Vinson Lou, and James Cote know the time-consuming process of course selection first-hand. They created the tool to help with this “often onerous task,” Cai said.

“Usually courses have a lot of pre-requisites. It can be super messy writing all of them out on paper with a lot of arrows. It’s just such a pain,” Cai said. “We thought that it would be natural for there to be a flow chart to visualize them all.”

Student project aims to make course selection “a little clearer for students,” Bui says

Once a course code is entered into the course pre-requisite finder, it scrapes text from the course catalog and parses it to identify the course’s pre-requisites, Bui explained. The tool then generates a flowchart for students to see all of their course options at a glance, Cai added.

“When you go through the course catalogs, it can be really confusing because a lot of the wording is really ambiguous,” Bui said. “Our tool helps to make it a little clearer for students.”

The project won the HackED Beta 24-hour hackathon in November 2024. Hosted by the Computer Engineering Club, HackED Beta is an entry-level hackathon open to undergraduate students across Canada.

According to Cao, the team hopes the tool can particularly help U of A students who are new to navigating the schedule building process.

“We know how difficult it is to make a schedule, especially in your first year,” Cao said.

After receiving feedback from students, the team plans to implement the ability to find course co-requisites to the website.