Course Manager
Academic planning system that helps students visualize prerequisites, track progress, and plan semesters.
Project Overview
Course Manager is a mobile academic planning application that helps students understand degree structure, prerequisites, and long-term progression paths.
The system combines plan building, progress tracking, and graph visualization to make institutional course structures easier to navigate.
After pilot usage with students at Krea University, the product entered evaluation for institutional ERP integration as a student-facing planning layer.
Problem
Students often struggled to interpret complex prerequisite structures and coordinate semester planning across static advising materials.
At Krea, the planning experience suffered from three clear issues:
- Prerequisite relationships were difficult to visualize in sequence
- Degree planning required manual tracking across disconnected resources
- Academic progress was hard to understand at a glance
Solution
Course Manager introduced a structured mobile planning system that translates academic requirements into interactive and actionable student workflows.
The solution emphasized:
- Interactive prerequisite graphs showing dependency paths
- Degree plan management with status-aware course tracking
- Progress analytics for credits, GPA, and timeline visibility
- Offline-first mobile architecture for reliable daily use
By combining graph modeling with practical planning workflows, the product made complex institutional systems easier for students to understand and use.
Impact
Pilot Testing
Tested with 10 student pilot users
Planning Scale
Supports plans with up to 200 courses
Graph Complexity
Processes prerequisite graphs with 50+ dependencies
Institutional Status
Under review for university ERP integration
Product Features
Interactive Prerequisite Graph
Visualize course dependencies as directed graphs so students can understand prerequisite chains and bottlenecks quickly.
Degree Plan Builder
Create and manage structured academic plans, including majors, minors, and custom pathway variations.
Progress Analytics
Track credits completed, GPA estimates, and graduation timeline insights from a centralized dashboard.
Offline Support
Uses local SQLite storage to keep planning workflows available and reliable without network dependency.
Technical Architecture
Frontend
React Native with Expo and TypeScript for mobile-first academic planning
Database
SQLite via expo-sqlite for offline-first storage and performant local querying
Graph Visualization
React Native SVG for prerequisite dependency rendering
State Management
React Context API for plan state and user workflow synchronization
Validation
Custom graph validation including cycle detection and topological consistency checks
System Services
Progress tracking and recommendation services for academic decision support
Screenshots
Lessons Learned
Building Course Manager showed how strongly clear visual models can reduce planning anxiety in complex academic systems.
Real user testing emphasized that students value reliability and clarity more than feature breadth, especially in high-stakes decision workflows.
The project also deepened institutional product collaboration skills by bridging student experience design with university system constraints.