Choosing classes is an experience every UI student goes through twice a year, and it can be quite a difficult one. Students can seek advice from advisors or professors on which courses are best for them to take, but at the end of the day, they must make the decisions for themselves. UI students widely utilize a GPA visualization site to help make this important choice easier.

The GPA visualization site provides the average GPA of every course offered at the University to students. This information allows UI students to pick which classes are right for them based upon expected difficulty. The GPA visualization site was created by Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, professor in Grainger, and a team of students. In a brief foreword on the GPA visualization site, Fagen-Ulmschneider explains his role in and motivation towards creating this resource.

“For as long as grades have existed, I have not met a student who wasn’t at least a little interested in how ‘hard’ a course was,” Fagen-Ulmschneider said.

Fagen-Ulmschneider was inspired to create his visualization site after learning of the existence of a similar site, which required a $30 subscription for students to access the information. A bit of digging showed Fagen-Ulmschneider that the website had been created using a Freedom of Information Act request to gather the data on students’ GPA; he then submitted a similar request, which was granted.

Upon gathering the data, Fagen-Ulmschneider gathered a team of students to assemble the site, which was launched in April 2016 after months of hard work.

Many students find the GPA visualizations and disparity between sections provided by Fagen-Ulmschneider’s website particularly helpful when seeking to fulfill general education requirements.

“I’ve used (the GPA Visualizations site) to pick between classes that fill the same gen-ed requirement so I can better know the difficulty of the class that I’m signing up for,” said Owen Leander, freshman in Business.

Leander, among other students, praised the visualizations for how easy it makes picking classes and choosing the difficulty of one’s schedule.

Fagen-Ulmschneider and his team continue to maintain the site by regularly updating the visualizations before registration every semester and securing GPA data through repeated FOIA requests.

“The primary goal was to save students money from purchasing this data from another site – it felt wrong that students were paying $30 for public data, and I wanted to make sure it was available in an accessible way to everyone free of charge,” Fagen-Ulmschneider said.

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