Online course finder promotes class exploration

The new Course Finder website.

The new Course Finder website.

Jack Davis, Ashley Desserich, Ellie Ruos, staff reporters

South introduced a digital course guide at the beginning of the second semester to make class registration more efficient and relevant to students.

The five-month renovation process was inspired by the frustration Principal Lauren Fagel says she had with the printed course book. Fagel says the new, online course book is better organized and more condensed, which makes finding classes more straightforward for parents and students.

“The new version, [in comparison], is like night and day,” Fagel said. “It’s bold and colorful, it has our new logo, it’s way less text, much easier to read [and] it’s intuitive.”

Fagel put together a “digital course guide design team” of 12 GBS educators including Christopher Anderson, career and technology teacher and lead designer of the course book. Anderson says the team was aiming for simplicity and ease of use with the new course book.

“This [website] allows us to move away from unfriendly, static, PDF documents, and gives us the ability to add rich media to allow students to better understand what our courses entail,” Anderson said.

Katie Bauer, mother of sophomore Emily Bauer, enjoyed the website for similar reasons and praised its accessibility and transparency with parents.

“You can go directly to the subject you want, and don’t have to flip through the pages to find it,” Bauer said. “You can access it from anywhere, and those who have difficulties have their children to assist.”

The design team worked to release “phase one” of the new site. Fagel says the design team’s goal was to launch the new course guide by freshmen curriculum night. Having met this goal, Fagel says she looks forward to the potential that lies in the new course book.

“There’s quite a bit of white space and we consider that white space ‘phase two’,” Fagel said. “I love the potential for the white space—bringing a course to life with still photos on a loop, or even a mini podcast.”

Guidance Counselor Socorro Rogers says the old coursebook had many flaws including small print, wordiness, too much information and a lack of organization. Because of these flaws, Rogers says she sees the new one as a more effective way to help students.

“It helps [students] with order, organization and that transparency piece so things aren’t elusive,” Rogers said. “[Students] have relied on me during registration [in the past to tell them] what the requirements are […] and what [they] have left. Now, [that information is] at your fingertips and you are able to see what your expectations are.”

Rogers says the site will also keep parents informed about the class options their children have to choose from without depending on their child to find out the information for themselves.

“I think the [course book] will provide [students] with so much more information and [students] are going to take those courses they didn’t even know existed,” Rogers said.

*The  Journalistic Writing  class contributed to this report