ClassPoint

Message boards

ClassPoint features message boards that have all of the features of traditional online forums, but which work like a chat room, so that you never have to reload a discussion or leave the page to post or see new posts. Posting also works using the thread concept (other sites such as LiveJournal use this for their commenting), so that clear lines of discussion are easy to understand, and so you can hide threads that you've read or that don't interest you.

Course planner

ClassPoint's course planner is a convenient way to plan out what courses you want to register for in your next Term. The course planner features a graphical display of the schedule you have planned, and allows you to add courses to your plan and see which sections are open, waitlisted, or closed, and which sections conflict with other sections in your plan--all without ever having to reload the page.

Rosters

Rosters allow users to see who else is in their classes. Rosters show you all of the users in a course who have listed the course under their registered courses, have the course on their planner, or are watching the course. Rosters are visible only to confirmed users, and users can choose to limit or disable the extent to which they appear on rosters by changing their settings. You can view rosters by clicking the 'roster' link next to any course's listing in the planner, or by clicking the 'Roster' link on the right panel when browsing a course.

Reviews

Course and professor reviews allow students to rate their educational experience and provide specific feedback which is useful to other students in selecting which courses and professors to take. The data provided on ClassPoint comes from official course-instructor survey data provided by schools. Additionally, ClassPoint users may provide written reviews which augment school data, as well as issue their own rankings of courses and professors, which combine with the data provided by schools. Review data is combined with GPA and drop rate data, and is also integrated into the course planner so that students can view immediate overall statistics on courses and professors when they are planning their schedules.

Textbooks

View a listing of all of the listed textbooks for all of your classes on one convenient page.

Schedule change alerts

Schedule change alerts allow users to see what changes have occurred to their courses on the school's course catalog. This includes changes in sections to the meeting time and place, instructor, and status. Also tracked is the addition of new sections to existing courses. Registered users may choose to be notified via email or text message of such changes.

Groups

In addition to message boards and filing cabinets for classes, ClassPoint extends its forum and files functionality to user groups. Users can create groups, which they may join and use to faciliate group meetings and discussions, and share files. Additional functionality for restricted discussions is provided so that students in these groups may hold private discussions that are accessible only to verified group members.

Course recommendations

ClassPoint uses reviews left by users to give suggestions for courses to users, along with a prediction for what rating they might give the course.

Filing cabinet

ClassPoint also allows you to share files with your classmates through the filing cabinet, which is available under the options panel on the page for every course and every group.

Watching

ClassPoint allows you to watch as many courses and topics as you wish. These will appear in the panel on the right side of the page, and will allow you to know whenever new topics or posts have been made. According to your settings, you may also receive e-mail notifications about new posts in topics you are watching. Watching is not enabled for courses in terms which have not yet begun.

Anchoring The Post Directory

In every discussion topic, a directory of posts will appear on the right, under the options panel. This allows you to quickly browse messages by subject instead of manually searching the page for a particular post. If you are using Mozilla Firefox version 1.5+ or Internet Explorer version 6+, this directory will float with the page so that it is always visible. If you wish to disable this feature and anchor the directory onto the page so that it moves along as a normal page object, click the arrow button at the top-left of the post directory.

Browsing For A Course And Adding It

To add a course to your plan, browse for it using the two scrolling menus labeled 'Department' and 'Course'. Scroll through the Department menu to find the Department you want, and click its name to highlight it. All of the courses listed for the term you're planning will show up in the Course menu. Scroll through the Course menu to find the course that you want. To add the course to your plan, double-click it, or highlight it and click 'Add selected course to planner', or hit enter. The course will show up at the top of your plan.

Moving Courses Around

You can put the courses in your plan in whatever order you want. Use the arrows on the top-right of a course's box to move it up, down, or all the way to the top or bottom. The X next to the arrows will remove the course from your plan entirely. The - button at the top left of the box will minimize the course so that its sections are hidden and only its title is visible.

Adding And Removing Sections

To add a section to your plan, find the box for its course and click the 'add' link to the left of the desired section. This will cause the section to be included under the 'Planned Sections' list near the top of the page, and the section will also show up on the graphical schedule at the top of the page. To remove a section, navigate to its listing in its corresponding course box and click the 'remove' link to the left of the section.

Changing View Options

By default, the planner color-codes sections for each course to show you what sections are available, unavailable, or conflicting with other planned sections. Options to change these view settings are included at the bottom of the right panel. Courses that are cancelled or closed (full) are considered 'unavailable', and are colored grey. You may choose to have any sections that are unavailable not be displayed in the planner. By default, restricted or waitlisted sections are considered to be available, but you may choose to have either of these be considered unavailable. The planner also tells you what sections are conflicting with other sections in your plan; you can disable this option as well. Finally, you can disable all color coding of sections if you wish. All of these options are stored using cookies in your browser, and remembered for the next time you use the planner.

What the data refers to

When you see data about ratings, drop rate, and GPA for courses and instructors, the data may refer to different things depending on where it appears. When it appears just next to a course name, that means it applies to that course for all terms where data is available. When it appears just next to an instructor's name, that means it applies to all courses and terms which were taught by that instructor. When it appears with an instructor's name along with a course, that means that the data applies to that course taught by that instructor, for all terms where data is available.

For example, on the planner:And on a review page for a course as taught by a specific instructor:And on an instructor overview ("Courses taught by...") page:

Where the data comes from and how it's weighted

ClassPoint gets its review data directly from your school's course-instructor survey data. This is combined with the reviews which are left by ClassPoint users to give ratings to professors and courses. For each course, you can see a breakdown of how many people gave which response to which answer, and how many of those reviews came from the official school data and from ClassPoint reviews. Each review is given equal weight when calculating overall course and instructor ratings. For example, if a specific course has 80 school reviews which give the course an average rating of 4.00, and 20 ClassPoint reviews which give the course an average rating of 3.00, the overall course rating will be 80% of the school reviews plus 20% of the ClassPoint reviews, for a weighted average of 3.80.

Which alerts you can see for free

You may see any changes in the details of your registered sections for free. This includes changes in meeting time, meeting place, and instructor. Additionally, you can see when your registered sections become closed. You may also choose to be notified of any of these changes via email for free.

Which alerts you can see when you purchase credits

Credits allow you to be notified about changes to the course schedule which pertain to new course availability. This includes when sections that were closed or waitlisted become open, and when new sections are listed. Credits can be purchased at the rate of $5 per 10 courses. Credits apply only to a particular semester. After you purchase credits, you can watch courses by going to your course plan and clicking the 'watch' button at the top-right of any course. Once a course is watched, you will be able to see when any new sections are added, or when existing sections become open.

How to be notified of alerts

You can see alerts at any time by clicking 'schedule alerts' on the top navigation panel. Text-message alerts are available only for notifications of sections becoming available. Standard text-messaging rates apply.

Group types

There are two primary types of user groups: official student organizations and user-created groups. Any confirmed user can create a user-created group. In order to prevent fraudulent representation of official student organizations, ClassPoint only allows organizations which are registered as an official student organization at their school to add a listing at ClassPoint. A user who wishes to add a listing for an official student organization must have access to the contact email address listed for that organization (see below).

How to add an official student organization to ClassPoint

In order to add a group page for an official student organization, the organization must be listed with your school, and you must have access to the contact email address listed for that organization. To add the organization, first select it from the list of your school's unclaimed official student organizations.

Once you select the organization, you will be asked to confirm whether you want to add the group to ClassPoint. Then a message will be sent to the contact email address listed for the group, asking to confirm that you should be granted administrative privileges. When this message is confirmed, the group will be added to ClassPoint. Confirmation attempts will be cancelled after 48 hours.

User privileges

Each user privilege level has all of the privileges of levels below it in addition to the privileges given specifically to it:

Head administrator

• Approves or rejects join requests
• May remove open invitations
• May appoint or remove administrators
• May edit titles of administrators

Administrator

• May edit group information
• May post announcements
• May appoint or remove officers
• May edit titles of officers
• May remove members from the group
• For invite-only groups, may invite new members

Officer

• Gets to have a fancy title
• Is listed, along with their title, on the main page for the group

Member

• May post on the discussion board for the group
• May view and post to discussions visible only to the group

Avatars

'Avatar' is message board lingo for a user picture. Just like all user pictures, you can choose a picture of yourself or whatever image you would like to represent you. The maximum size for an avatar is 50x50 pixels, so if you upload something bigger than that, it will be resized.

Signatures

A signature is a common feature on message boards. Like an avatar, it is a way for a user to personalize their presence on the message board. A signature is a short piece of text which can include quotes or other personal information. ClassPoint user signatures are limited to 1024 characters, with no HTML. Users also have the option of disabling the display of other users' signatures.

Account removal

If you wish to remove your account, click here.

Browsers That Work With ClassPoint

ClassPoint has been designed and tested to work with the following browsers:

Browsers for Windows

• Google Chrome (recommended)
• Mozilla Firefox 3.0 (recommended)
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0
• Mozilla Firefox 1.5
• Mozilla Firefox 1.0 (some compatibility issues)
• Internet Explorer 7
• Internet Explorer 6 (some compatibility issues)
• Opera 9 (minor compatibility issues)

Browsers for Apple

• Safari 2.0 (recommended)
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0