Radgrad, The Good The Bad and The Buggy

18 May 2021

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My Experiences With Radgrad

I started the ICS program in Fall 2018 and on my second semester of classes, I was introduced to RadGrad in one of my ICS 211 classes. Being introduced to the entire system and logging into it the first time was a pleasant experience as it was surprising how much information and formalities were sprawled on the site. The whole level up system was an interesting concept which would incentivize the more competitive people, and it seemed to have many opportunities that you take on. But, since I was only just on my first year of college, I brushed the whole experience aside and tried to worry about academics. Looking back, I know that was a pretty idiotic mindset as now I’m semester away from graduating and only taking a more in depth look at the RadGrad system now. However the changes that I say a couple years ago compared to now is definitely a step up from it’s previous conception. There’s a lot to work on before a solid launch, but there’s definitely some good, some bad, and some really buggy portions that make up this system.

Personal To Do List

One of the newer functions of the RadGrad system is the Personal To Do List, and for a new user of RadGrad, I think this is an extremely helpful tool. Starting off at the high priority, the website implores you to fix up your degree planner with courses and opportunities, which honestly is a great first step for students unsure of their future classes to take. It also has you add interests as a higher priority which helps with formulating classes tailored to your interests. It’s also great that RadGrad takes data from STAR to know if you finished specific classes and makes tasks around this database too. Last high priority, which I think is one of the more important tasks is choosing career goals, which is great that the website pushes towards because the end goal for all of us ICS students is working at a job that we are interested in. The medium priority has tasks that are pretty on point on being more optional to do like making reviews and checking up on your ICE levels, which I’ll elaborate on my opinions later. The low priority is something that I expected to be completely optional tasks, but it seems to encapsulate all your finished tasks, which can be misleading to some.

Interests, Careers, Courses, and Opportunities

As all of these tabs use a similar system of item selection into your profile, I thought it be good to review them as a whole. Each item card for these four sections are quite similar, but they have a really nice design. Since it is connected to a relative profile collections, you can tell which items are on your profile through the green tab, which is a very helpful addition. What I like most of the four is that they are connected by its related data for each item, which really intertwins the whole system like a giant tree. For example, if I wanted to become a Robotics Engineer, the related courses and intersts creates a distinct path to get towards that goal. Functionality wise, I think this is a very strong suit for the system. UI wise, there could be a few improvements to the design, namely the placement of the tags and the frequency of the item listings per row. Another item of note is the opportunities tab, which is honestly a really great portion that allows for very specific internships and events that feel much more specialized than the normal job listings you can see on sites like Indeed or LinkedIn. This also having related data to each listing helps out a lot. Overall these four tabs define RadGrad’s functionality as a whole and it sets it apart as a very unique tool for ICS students.

ICE and Its Levels

The ICE system was the unique system in RadGrad that appealed to me initially as a student in the program because it quantifies the progress into our major in a way that shows how well a person is doing. I think this system is a really good push to students because in order to level up, not only do you need to take classes, but it enforces extra curriculum in order to fill out the I’s and E’s of the 3 disciplines. This however is where the system could come off as a very steep slope since the idea of the ICE system is that a student can level up once every semester and hit level 6 by their graduation, but reaching that can be quite difficult. For me, I’m level 3, pending level 4 however the jump to level 5 looks daunting to say the least. I think most people agree that at least one internship and a few clubs will help quantify getting level 5 or 6 in the ICE requirements, but even though I did most of that I barely have level 4. I do like that the ICE tab does give recommendations for things to do for each letter of ICE. Also the requirements for each level isn’t well specified in the “about the levels” which could be elaborated on in future iterations. Besides that, it’s a solid incentive for students to look upon if they want to know if they are doing enough to do well in the field.

Planner

The degree planner for RadGrad is quite a helpful tool, but currently seems to be the buggiest in this current iteration. I think it’s great for students to draw out their ICS classes that they should take as the semesters go along. However this causes a few pitfalls, one being that making a planner for your 4 years assumes that you don’t drop a single class. If someone wanted to take ICS 311 last semester, but failed ICS 241 this semester, they are virtually held back a semester meaning that they would need to change in there planner to fit the new path. Another problem that I can see for new users of the system is that adding future classes can be quite confusing. Instead of being able to directly add classes/opportunities that you want from a list on the planner, you would have to find it first in their respective tabs, add them to your profile, and finally add them from your added list into its respective semester. Currently, adding classes to your profile doesn’t show up in the planner. I will elaborate on the bugs in the Recommendations/Notable Bugs sections of this essay review, but needless to say it doesn’t seem that related data is working on the planner for some portions of its functionality. The planner is directly tied to ICE points so any problems with the data directly affects people’s ICE progress.

The design could use some work as it could be much more appealing. Each rectangle could use more bigger fonts since it’s hard to grab specific items (the items tend to be higher than they appear). I’m not too fond of the red X’s used to remove specific items since they are slightly bigger than the height of the rectangles. Perhaps using a more minimalistic black X would help more. If anything this is a topic that can be worked upon throughout the summer.

Overall the planner as a whole is very beneficial to visualize a person’s degree plan, but it’s a tool that can’t be use on its own. Students will most likely find that they would use this in tandem with STAR’s degree planner to get the most out of its functionality. I think this is for the best because it does skirt the need to enforce prerequisite locks on adding classes since STAR already does that for students.

Review System

The last, but one of the most important features in RadGrad is the review system for every item in the four tabs. If you want more information for a class or an internship opportunity, nothing beats personal experience to hear from. It’s a normal conventional review format with a 5 star rating with comments, but the simple of idea having that for all these items skips the need for Rate My Professors or asking classmates if they took the class before. There are a few concerns with inputting the reviews, most notably that even if you make a review, the system can’t tell you have submitted one. Fortunately, you can edit reviews in it’s respective tab on top, but being able to edit a review on the page you made it on would be a nice quality of life change. Overall this was a needed addition that just adds to the usefullness of the system overall.

Top Strengths of RadGrad

• Each of the four tabs of Interests, Careers, Courses, and Opportunities are all intertwined which allows users to see how every component correlates with each other. This cements the whole system as one package.
• The ICE leveling system presents a refreshing progresion scale that helps students understand how well they are doing in their path to become ICS graduates.
• Being closely connected with STAR’s data, it allows for each student’s profiles to be already tailored before they need to do anything. (For example, most of your classes that you took are already placed in the planner in their respective semester). It also allows for quick recommendations to be made for wherever a student is, no matter how late they started on RadGad.
• The To Do List being the first thing a student does is a great way to push to understand the system and also expedites the process of what should be done so students will confidently be on track for excellence.

Top Weaknesses of RadGrad

• The UI could use some work, like the design of the planner which is finicky with the drag and drop function. Some of the cards also have unnecessary padding on their titles.

• The ICE level system could use some more elaboration for those confused on how to level up. Specifying the leveling requirements for each level in the “ABOUT THE LEVELS” tab could help with that.
• The To Do List does specify tasks with relative priority, but some of the highest priority tasks can’t be completed like the Courses since a good chunk of ICS courses aren’t in the courses tab.
• Although the planner is a great addition for students to formulate their entire ICS progression, the lack of outside prerequisites for certain classes could result in a faulty schedule. Failing a class could also result in the entire planner needing to be changed as well. Currently the planner has to be used with STAR’s planner, but we can definitely improve it to be its own standalone concept.

• Recommendations/Notable Bugs

• The reviews task doesn’t let you opt out of opportunities that you don’t have much to say about (for me personally would be the career fair).
• I think that the medium priority should be changed to low priority, and the low priority to be a completed tab to reduce confusion for newer users.

• Using the website anything other than fullscreen can cause some unnecessary overlapping on some pages like Opportunities.

• There are duplicates of courses in the degree planner which you can’t remove.

• Adding courses from the course tab doesn’t show them into the degree planner.
• The interest tab has items that don’t have any related career goals, courses, or opportunities attached to them (like .NET or Azure). If it can’t be helped to add them, then this can be negligible.
• In the interest tab, “Theory of computation” should have the C capitalized.

• The levels tab should show not only the level requirements of your next level, but the other levels as well.
• Not all of the ICS classes are implemented into the site yet (notably ICS 427 and 438).
• Courses Tab: Most of the 600+ level classes don’t have interests on their cards.

• RadGrad can’t tell that you made one despite showing up in the list of reviews on an item.