Thanks to one frustrated university student, the grueling process of scheduling classes is about to get a little easier.

This semester, sophomore computer engineering student Eric Lee finished a Google Chrome extension, the UMD Schedule Browsing Enhancer, which automatically displays OurUMD grade data when users look up class descriptions on Testudo.

The extension, which students can downloadfor free from the Google Chrome web store, changes the standard Testudo webpage so each course includes the average GPA and average number of stars each professor received from student reviews. When the user’s mouse hovers over the grade point averages, a graph of the grade distributions from OurUMD will appear.

Lee said he created the extension to better integrate Testudo and OurUMD and help ensure other students don’t have the same class scheduling experience he did.

“I was annoyed with switching between tabs for every teacher and every course,” Lee said. “My first semester here, I picked terrible classes because I didn’t know about ourumd.com.”

Although he finally released the app this semester, Lee said he began creating its first elements in CMSC 131H: Object-Oriented Programming I, a computer science class he took last year. Lee said unlike the traditional non-honors course, students in this class had the opportunity to be more creative with their projects.

The course professor, James Purtilo, assigns an open-ended creative research project for the freshmen and said he was surprised Lee started the application in the course.

“He deserves all the credit for putting this together,” Purtilo said.

But Lee said the course stuck with him because such an approach to teaching is uncommon in computer science courses.

“Some professors give open-ended problem sets while others just test the concepts and how you would apply them,” he said. “Some say ‘find out what this does’ and others say ‘make a circuit or a program that will does this.'”

Lee said he has not advertised his creation aside from a couple Facebook links. Although more than 200 people have downloaded the extension and student reviews include comments such as “This is amazing!” and “Awesome Idea,” Lee said he doesn’t think the product is revolutionary.

“It’s not like it makes you breakfast or anything, it just helps you pick better classes,” he said. “If people like it, they like it.”

news@umdbk.com