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When I was in college, our online class registration process for each semester was very crude When the time of year came, you'd be put into a group. Groups wou

When I was in college, our online class registration process for each semester was very crude When the time of year came, you'd be put into a group. Groups would be staggered across a series of days so as not to overwhelm the system. Very early on your group's morning (like 5am I think?), the floodgates would open and it was a mad (online) dash to grab slots so that you could hopefully get good times (avoiding 8am's, etc, or at least getting the credits you needed!). This all happened through a web portal, and in a matter of minutes you could miss your chance for some of the more popular classes. It was like trying to buy a PS5. To go more quickly, you could type in an exact course number instead of browsing through the listings. So people would look up the numbers for the courses they wanted ahead of time (as well as for some backups, in case one or two of them filled up). Well, I learned about AutoHotKey from another student. I hardcoded each of my F-keys to type in the course IDs on my list so I could fill them out rapidly, and was fairly successful getting the classes I wanted :)

63 5y ago
The contemporary version of that is automating the whole process with Python and Selenium. Really it just calls into question why fifo is the mechanism for assigning priority for class registration and what better alternatives might be.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  It's probably done this way because it's the easiest naive way to implement class sign ups. School IT seems like one of those places where accomplishing anything that isn't absolutely essential just doesn't happen.
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    That doesn’t seem like it should be an IT problem at all. It could be solvable with software, but how come you can make it into this horrible game of booking tickets to a popular festival?
    - bsder 5y ago
      Define "fair"? If there is a 3PM class and an 8AM class, 90%+ of your people are going to sign up for the 3PM class (commuting students might not if they can use the early classes to pile all their classes into the same day). Normally, if you needed a class to graduate, you could generally work something out. However, those classes were generally "in your major" and mostly never banged into hard limits (laboratory classes being the exception). I am reminded of my beginning foreign language classes. They were always oversubscribed, but if you showed up the teacher would always sign an exception for you. They knew that at least 25%+ of the class was going to drop, so, they could basically give everyone an exception who showed up to the class.
      - summm 5y ago
        Then they maybe should offer more classes at 3 pm an less on 8 pm instead of forcing people into 8 pm that don't want it?
      - heavenlyblue 5y ago
        Random distribution? As you said, you can later on give the exception to the students naturally.
- antisthenes 5y ago
  > Really it just calls into question why fifo is the mechanism for assigning priority for class registration and what better alternatives might be. There's only so many ways of assigning scarce resources to a number of participants. And none of them are perfect. FIFO is one. Lottery is another. Bidding money (auction) is another, where applicable. There are more complex schemes like ranked choice, but that becomes increasingly complex to implement, requires goods to be somewhat interchangeable, and also requires education (not everyone knows what ranked choice is, but everyone knows what 'first come first serve' means)
deleted 5y ago
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63 5y ago

The contemporary version of that is automating the whole process with Python and Selenium. Really it just calls into question why fifo is the mechanism for assigning priority for class registration and what better alternatives might be.

Buttons840 5y ago
It's probably done this way because it's the easiest naive way to implement class sign ups. School IT seems like one of those places where accomplishing anything that isn't absolutely essential just doesn't happen.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  That doesn’t seem like it should be an IT problem at all. It could be solvable with software, but how come you can make it into this horrible game of booking tickets to a popular festival?
  - bsder 5y ago
    Define "fair"? If there is a 3PM class and an 8AM class, 90%+ of your people are going to sign up for the 3PM class (commuting students might not if they can use the early classes to pile all their classes into the same day). Normally, if you needed a class to graduate, you could generally work something out. However, those classes were generally "in your major" and mostly never banged into hard limits (laboratory classes being the exception). I am reminded of my beginning foreign language classes. They were always oversubscribed, but if you showed up the teacher would always sign an exception for you. They knew that at least 25%+ of the class was going to drop, so, they could basically give everyone an exception who showed up to the class.
    - summm 5y ago
      Then they maybe should offer more classes at 3 pm an less on 8 pm instead of forcing people into 8 pm that don't want it?
    - heavenlyblue 5y ago
      Random distribution? As you said, you can later on give the exception to the students naturally.
antisthenes 5y ago
> Really it just calls into question why fifo is the mechanism for assigning priority for class registration and what better alternatives might be. There's only so many ways of assigning scarce resources to a number of participants. And none of them are perfect. FIFO is one. Lottery is another. Bidding money (auction) is another, where applicable. There are more complex schemes like ranked choice, but that becomes increasingly complex to implement, requires goods to be somewhat interchangeable, and also requires education (not everyone knows what ranked choice is, but everyone knows what 'first come first serve' means)

deleted 5y ago

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