A STUDENT INFORMATION SERVICE FOR A UNIVERSITY COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

Abstract

CPSCinfo is an experimental information service which presents administrative and academic information to Computer Science students at the University of Calgary. This paper describes the system, including the page presentation scheme with its highly interactive user interface, and the database and how it was constructed. Operational aspects such as database maintenance are discussed. The system has been in use for one year. The user community is still growing rapidly and has not yet reached a steady state. Usage by students has been recorded, and student perceptions elicited by means of a questionnaire. Perhaps it is still too early to evaluate the real worth of CPSCinfo; nevertheless, the usage and survey data support some tentative conclusions. These appear to apply equally to other, similar, information systems.