Polytechnic Campus

Geeking it up at polyTECH day

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So I’m standing in the middle of the Cooley Ballroom surrounded by a whole bunch of people that are likely smarter than me. I’ve never been to a technology expo, but I’m assuming the atmosphere is much the same as it is here today. There are probably at least 50 different displays showcasing projects and research done by ASU students and faculty. One of the most impressive is a piece of software called Celeritas.

Designed by graduate student Logan Swapp of the College of Science and Technology, this program is an interactive web application designed to help students create course schedules. If you’re wondering where he got the funny name…Celeritas is Latin for swiftness or speed. Swapp says he didn’t know this when he picked the name, but Celeritas is where the “C” in Einstein’s famous E=mc² comes from. Giddy up.

By telling Celeritas which classes you are interested in, the days you would like to attend classes, and how many credit hours you want to take, the software searches the database of ASU courses and suggests a schedule.

You’re probably asking, so what? Can’t I do that already? Well…not really. The current setup at ASU has some flaws. One major time-waster is trying to figure out if Class A will conflict with Class B. Celeritas eliminates this headache by displaying a suggested schedule that is completely free of time conflicts. It does the work for you. No more scratching out schedules on paper and trying to remember what time your Chemistry lab starts at so you can get that Statistics class in.

This would be an incredible tool to have as a student. It saves hours of time reorganizing and searching for an ideal schedule. Because it is built using the Ruby on Rails framework, it is super fast and super light-weight. It could easily be integrated with existing ASU Interactive tools to provide a seamless experience for the user.

This simple tool meets two of the biggest requirements when it comes to software.

1. Fill a need/Solve a problem
2. Make it simple

Unfortunately it is only hosted on Swapp’s local servers right now, otherwise I would include some links here so you could try it out. Below are some screenshots of the interface. (Thanks Logan!) Click the thumbnails to view them bigger.

Add a Course:

Additional Options:

Course List:

View Schedule:

Hopefully this will be adopted by ASU before I graduate…I want to try it out.