🎉 1.1.3 Update, Refreshed Data, and the Future

This announcement will cover a couple different areas.

🔧 1.1.3 Update

Changes in this update:

• SimpleSyllabus Integration:
  • Added the “X Syllabi Found” button on the Course page
  • This button will show if any syllabi were found to be currently available on the official UH Syllabus website.
  • This feature was requested by @uhislam. Thanks for the great idea!
  • Disclaimer:
    • Past versions of syllabi are not stored by CougarGrades.
    • The availability of syllabi through SimpleSyllabus is subject to their data retention policy.
    • Syllabi made available by UH prior to the instruction of SimpleSyllabus through their PeopleSoft system, Blackboard, or Canvas are not accessible by this feature.
    • Due to the nature of this feature, it may break at any time if SimpleSyllabus decides to change how their website API works or blocks CougarGrades servers from accessing their service.
• Added the “Latest Data” field to the site footer for visibility on how up-to-date the grade data is
• Updated FAQ to reflect how data will be updated moving forward
• Updated sitemap.txt for search engines like Google

📊 Data Refresh

• Grade Distribution data from Summer 2022 to Fall 2024 has been added thanks to the volunteer work done by @adamnelsonarcher

• Core Curriculum data has been updated from the 2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog
• Course Descriptions have been updated from the 2024-2025 Catalog
• Data about the individual colleges at UH has been updated
  • Ex: College of Education, Hobby School of Public Affairs, etc
• Subject data have been updated from the 2024-2025 Catalog
  • Ex: “POPH” → “Population Health”, “SGNL” → “American Sign Language”, etc

🔭 New Policy: Future Data Refreshes will be driven by volunteers

Previously, the acquisition of all data was done by me. Since I graduated from UH 4 years ago now in 2021 _{(wow, time flies)}, I don’t have the time to see this process through anymore.

After receiving assistance from @adamnelsonarcher in adding long-awaited data from Summer 2022 to Fall 2024, I’ve been persuaded to stop trying to run a one-man-show anymore.

All future refreshes to grade distribution data on CougarGrades will need to be performed by volunteers.

As of Update 1.1.3, this process and instructions are documented in our FAQ. If you contact me about any missing data in the future, I will refer you to this page.

📰 An update on missing data

Some of you may have noticed that CougarGrades is missing data from Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.

As mentioned in our FAQ, requests for new data are sent to UH automatically about a month or so after the conclusion of every semester.

On January 28, 2023, one of these requests was sent to UH for Fall 2022 data. I did not ever receive a response. This was unusual, and I won’t speculate why. On February 21, 2023, I sent a follow-up email asking if there were any updates to my request, or if any action on my part was required in order to have it fulfilled. I still never received a response.

On May 30, 2023, the next request was sent to UH for Spring 2023 data. I received a response 13 days later asking for clarifications with my request. I don’t think that has ever happened before, so I found that unusual. I provided my clarifications a few days later in a follow-up email and I’m still waiting to hear back.

I’m not sure why my dialog with UH has changed in small ways within the past 2 semesters, but I am grateful that they responded to my most recent request.

TL;DR, these are the reasons that Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 data is missing. Hopefully it will be added soon, and future data updates will process more smoothly.

Thank you for using CougarGrades.

Austin

🎉 1.1.0 Update

CougarGrades is getting its first major update since the big redesign in 1.0.0 with some hand-crafted new features.

Changes in this update:

• “Popular” page:
  • Added the “🔥 Popular” page
  • This page has 4 different tabs under it:
    • Top Enrolled Courses
    • Most Viewed Courses – Powered by Google Analytics
    • Top Enrolled Instructors
    • Most Viewed Instructors – Powered by Google Analytics
• Bug Fixed: GPA/SD calculation fixed
  • Fixed bug where GPA/SD was calculated incorrectly, resulting in some Courses/Instructors having very poorly skewed data (#115)
  • This is a bug that has been affecting CougarGrades for some time, often leading to misleading results. It disproportionately affected Graduate level Courses/Instructors and we’re happy to have it resolved.

  • Below is a Before/After example using the Course PCOL 6198 and its associated Instructors

• “Random” button:
  • Added the “🔀 Random” button
  • Clicking the “Random” button will take you to a random Course or Instructor

  • The /random, /random/course, and /random/instructor links are all valid

    

• Improved Search Engine
  • Added a new Search Engine to replace the old one.
  • This new search engine is fast, is tolerant to typos, and is processed entirely in the browser.
  • Uses search algorithm Okapi BM25, which has been used since the 1970s, powered by open-source project Lyra.

  • Searches against a Course’s name, short description, and long description

• Groups:
  • Added more Groups based on each College at UH
    • From College of Architecture, to College of Technology, and more.
  • Added “All Subjects” Group

  • Sidebar now has “peeking” arrows to make scrolling easier

• Maintenance Monitor

  • Added “Maintenance Monitor” to automatically be informed if the site is in “Maintenance Mode” and to see how much longer it will be

• Minor changes:
  • Improved SEO reliability

  • Pages with “Sections” tables have had the “Total Enrolled” column added (requested by @drwang22)

  • Other various small UI/UX changes
• Bug fixes:
  • Fixed bug where “Class Size” measurement doesn’t exclude “empty” classes (#114)
  • Improved various 404 pages
• Technical changes:
  • The web app should be much faster. It fetches data in a much smarter way.
    • We no longer use the Firestore Web SDK in our front-end and instead use HTTP requests to our serverless API powered by Vercel

🔧 1.0.7 Update

Changes in this update:

• Groups:
  • Added “🔥 Trending” results to the Search results.
    • Powered by Google Analytics
    • Shows most visited pages from the last 30 days.

    

🔧 1.0.6 Update

⚠️ This update has some changes to the database, so some downtime will be experienced during the maintenance period. A message will be posted on the site during this time and will be removed after the maintenance has completed.

Changes in this update:

• Groups:
  • Added new Core Curriculum Groups for each Undergraduate Catalog
    • Ex: “Creative Arts (All)”: All courses that have ever satisfied this area of the Core Curriculum
    • Ex: “Creative Arts (2022-2023)”: The courses that satisfied this area of the Core Curriculum for 2022-2023 catalog year

    • Only the group for the latest catalog and the “(All)” group will be displayed in the navigation sidebar/accordion.

      

    • Groups for past catalogs will be accessible by visiting a Course that is present in that catalog, or by URL.

      

  • Updated Core Curriculum Group descriptions to better clarify what they represent
  • For Core Curriculum Groups, the list of sources is now dynamically listed and up to date
  • Groups with similar names are better differentiated in the UI
  • Improved searching for Core Curriculum Groups
• Data:
  • Added Summer 2022 data
  • Added Summer 2021 data