Special Interview with Bentley college student Katie Wood!
Katherine Wood, otherwise known as Katie, is a student at Bentley University. She is a girl and a coder, so we asked her if she would mind being interviewed, as a special treat for the last day presentation. She agreed, and her interview is below.
GWC: So, first can you tell us a little about yourself?
KW: My name is Katie Wood, I’m 21 years old, and I live in Andover, CT. I just graduated from Bentley University where I majored in actuarial science. I am starting a full-time job with Liberty Mutual Insurance in July where I will be in their actuarial rotation program. Since Liberty’s office is located in Boston, I will also be moving to South Boston with a few of my friends from school, who are also working in the Boston area.
GWC: We heard you recently built an excel spreadsheet. Can you tell us a little more about your code?
KW: I was part of the honors program at Bentley University and as part of the program, each student is required to complete an honors capstone project. Most students complete research papers for their projects, but I was more interested in doing a coding project after I took a course that taught me the basics of Visual Basics for Applications (VBA), which is the coding language behind Microsoft Excel. I approached my professor from this course and asked if he had any ideas for a project I could do that would incorporate using VBA coding. He told me that he is part of a working group that was created to test whether visualization could be used to improve a process or experience. They had the idea of building a user interface that would improve the course registration process at Bentley, which is currently not very good. I brainstormed with the professors in this working group and came up with a plan of a user interface I could build in Excel that would help Bentley students as they register for classes each semester. What my code does is take into account what courses a student has already taken and when the student would prefer to take classes and provides recommendations for what courses they should take during the upcoming semester based on what previous students in their major had taken. To provide these recommendations, my code needed to pull in all of the available courses being offered in the upcoming semester, with at least one seat still open, from the Bentley course listings website, since it only made sense to recommend classes that were being offered and still had at least one seat still available. The code would then take into account what previous students in the user’s major had taken and in what order, as well as the user’s day and time preferences, to provide recommendations of what would be logical next classes to take for the user. The code would also provide multiple schedule options so that the user could compare different schedules to find the best combination of sections of courses for them.
GWC: How long did it take you to code the sheet?
KW: I worked on this project for almost an entire semester, or about 15 weeks. I was also taking other classes and studying for an actuarial exam during this time, so it wasn’t my only focus, but I would say I worked on this project around 2 - 4 hours a week for those 15 weeks.
GWC: What gave you the idea for it?
KW: The working group of professors at Bentley gave me the idea to build a user interface to help improve the Bentley registration experience. However, since I was a student at Bentley who had to register for classes every semester, I had a lot of personal experience to draw from. I had a lot of ideas for how the registration experience could be improved and what I would want in a tool if I were to continue registering for classes at Bentley. For example, I really liked the idea that the tool could provide recommendations, much like an academic advisor could, based on what similar students had taken in the past. This is a feature that isn’t incorporated in any of the available registration tools at Bentley.
GWC: Who are the target users for it?
KW: The target users would be undergraduate students at Bentley University as they prepare to register for classes each semester.
GWC: What coding language did you use?
KW: I used the Visual Basics for Applications (VBA) coding language.
GWC: Can you give us the link to your project?
KW: I attached the Excel file of my project to this email*. It is just a prototype of a tool that could eventually be built to help Bentley students, so it is not perfect by any means. And I’ll just mention that the process of pulling in the courses being offered in the upcoming semester from the Bentley website (the code that runs when you click the “Update course listings” button on the first worksheet) takes a pretty long time and is a little temperamental, so you may just want to leave the course data as it is.
*The original interview was via email. We have downloaded it as a google sheet and shared it here ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4BAWsmqrHjXRzlSZzU3czdGc3gxVHdnV2MwOHAtMHBVQ3Iw/view?usp=sharing ). Hopefully it will work.
We would like to personally thank Katie for her time and participation in our website. Thank you, Katie! :)
GWC: So, first can you tell us a little about yourself?
KW: My name is Katie Wood, I’m 21 years old, and I live in Andover, CT. I just graduated from Bentley University where I majored in actuarial science. I am starting a full-time job with Liberty Mutual Insurance in July where I will be in their actuarial rotation program. Since Liberty’s office is located in Boston, I will also be moving to South Boston with a few of my friends from school, who are also working in the Boston area.
GWC: We heard you recently built an excel spreadsheet. Can you tell us a little more about your code?
KW: I was part of the honors program at Bentley University and as part of the program, each student is required to complete an honors capstone project. Most students complete research papers for their projects, but I was more interested in doing a coding project after I took a course that taught me the basics of Visual Basics for Applications (VBA), which is the coding language behind Microsoft Excel. I approached my professor from this course and asked if he had any ideas for a project I could do that would incorporate using VBA coding. He told me that he is part of a working group that was created to test whether visualization could be used to improve a process or experience. They had the idea of building a user interface that would improve the course registration process at Bentley, which is currently not very good. I brainstormed with the professors in this working group and came up with a plan of a user interface I could build in Excel that would help Bentley students as they register for classes each semester. What my code does is take into account what courses a student has already taken and when the student would prefer to take classes and provides recommendations for what courses they should take during the upcoming semester based on what previous students in their major had taken. To provide these recommendations, my code needed to pull in all of the available courses being offered in the upcoming semester, with at least one seat still open, from the Bentley course listings website, since it only made sense to recommend classes that were being offered and still had at least one seat still available. The code would then take into account what previous students in the user’s major had taken and in what order, as well as the user’s day and time preferences, to provide recommendations of what would be logical next classes to take for the user. The code would also provide multiple schedule options so that the user could compare different schedules to find the best combination of sections of courses for them.
GWC: How long did it take you to code the sheet?
KW: I worked on this project for almost an entire semester, or about 15 weeks. I was also taking other classes and studying for an actuarial exam during this time, so it wasn’t my only focus, but I would say I worked on this project around 2 - 4 hours a week for those 15 weeks.
GWC: What gave you the idea for it?
KW: The working group of professors at Bentley gave me the idea to build a user interface to help improve the Bentley registration experience. However, since I was a student at Bentley who had to register for classes every semester, I had a lot of personal experience to draw from. I had a lot of ideas for how the registration experience could be improved and what I would want in a tool if I were to continue registering for classes at Bentley. For example, I really liked the idea that the tool could provide recommendations, much like an academic advisor could, based on what similar students had taken in the past. This is a feature that isn’t incorporated in any of the available registration tools at Bentley.
GWC: Who are the target users for it?
KW: The target users would be undergraduate students at Bentley University as they prepare to register for classes each semester.
GWC: What coding language did you use?
KW: I used the Visual Basics for Applications (VBA) coding language.
GWC: Can you give us the link to your project?
KW: I attached the Excel file of my project to this email*. It is just a prototype of a tool that could eventually be built to help Bentley students, so it is not perfect by any means. And I’ll just mention that the process of pulling in the courses being offered in the upcoming semester from the Bentley website (the code that runs when you click the “Update course listings” button on the first worksheet) takes a pretty long time and is a little temperamental, so you may just want to leave the course data as it is.
*The original interview was via email. We have downloaded it as a google sheet and shared it here ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4BAWsmqrHjXRzlSZzU3czdGc3gxVHdnV2MwOHAtMHBVQ3Iw/view?usp=sharing ). Hopefully it will work.
We would like to personally thank Katie for her time and participation in our website. Thank you, Katie! :)