CS-3251 Course Website

Vanderbilt University's Intermediate Software Design (CS-3251) course is not easy. After serving as a TA for four semesters and head TA for half that time, the course's lack of organization was not making students' lives easier. It's time that changed.

Introducing a fully-redesigned website for the course. Course information is backed by an easy-to-change JSON containing lecture dates and topics, TA office hour lists, and course materials.

Most frequently used is the custom Office Hours Queue for students to get orderly help. An overwhelming majority reported this queue drastically improved their office hours experience, and TAs unanimously reported the Queue made it easier to find who needs help.

Instructors have access to an Admin Console containing Rubrics for programming assignments. Rubrics are written using MDX (enhanced Markdown) styling and rendered on the webpage. This made grading faster, easier to catch important points, and more accurate than strictly using Markdown files.

The entire website was made and deployed in under 48-hours using Next.js, Shadcn, Pusher, and MongoDB.