New Web site claims to help students better manage their time, tasks - Press Coverage

Adrianne DeWeese over at Kansas State University writes for the Collegian there, and interviewed us about Gradefix. She wrote a great article about why a tool like Gradefix can help students get better grades. You can check it out here:


New Web site claims to help students better manage their time, tasks - Kansas State Collegian, by Adrianne DeWeese

It's great when people you don't even know are calling you asking for interviews so they can write articles about something you've worked very hard to build, and luckily for us, it's been happening more and more often. We've been getting a lot of blogs, podcasts, reviews, and newspaper articles written about us lately, and we're happy that more students will be able to find out what Gradefix can do for them.

Striking the Root

Thoreau said, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." It was a great temptation for us to ignore the scheduling algorithm because of the already good answer we had. To make the matter worse we were not even sure if we could solve the problem like we wanted to. However, Mac Newbold our Chief Software Architect was willing to take a mighty strike to the root and he has come through in shining colors, I cannot praise him enough. Brilliant work Mac!

We faced a lot of challenges in our task of improving the algorithm. To solve the problem we pulled out of our database of schedules and began looking for the schedules in which the old algorithm most poorly scheduled. In the process we found some major obstacles we'd need to solve to make your scheduling better. We tried out a lot of ideas and most didn't go liked we'd hoped, I think it is fair to say the task was daunting. We could have easily done a lot of other things with the time it took to solve this problem; I can say today though it was the right thing to do for you our users. I feel honestly that this improvement has been a major step in taking Gradefix from being good to great and we are proud to release it to you.

Thank you to so many of you for your help with testing, development, ideas, and support. I am always amazed at the caliber of people Gradefix attracts. May you all have a great semester, keep up the good work.

Thanks,
Mark Polson
CEO
Gradefix.com

New and Very Improved

Well, as Mark mentioned last month, we've been working hard on some major improvements to the algorithm (process) that calculates schedules in Gradefix. It's basically like giving the site a brain transplant or something. Gradefix users will notice a big difference in how much the schedules have improved and how flexible and customizable they are.

One of the major changes is the addition of the Schedule Adjustor. You'll notice it on the bottom left in your Schedule view. Because all students aren't created equal, now each person can individually specify how much work they can do effectively in one sitting. For example, I tend to fall asleep if I try to read a textbook for more than an hour or two, and can only study for an exam for about two hours before my brain is fried. But I can do homework for 4 hours in a row and still be going strong usually. I can now tell Gradefix that, and it will respect that when it makes up my personalized schedule.

This new schedule generator allows a lot more flexibility, so you can control how early you start on your homework, whether you do it in big chunks or little chunks, and how much it is allowed to pack in on a single day. Another feature you'll notice is that it won't have you do work on two different homework assignments for the same class on the same day unless you finish one before you start on the next one.

We granted an early "sneak preview" at today's release to our beta testing team (contact support@gradefix.com if you're interested in joining it) and to a few bloggers who have expressed an interest in our product. In fact, one of them already blogged about our new release:

http://www.centernetworks.com/gradefix-releases-updated-algorithm

You might also see our press release coming to a college newspaper near you within the next week or so.

So to our users: Keep the great feedback coming! We really appreciate it and take you seriously... the features in this release are almost completely user-driven, suggestions from people just like you who were willing to tell us how we can improve the service to be just what you need.

Keep an eye out this term/semester for other important updates to Gradefix.com, including some top-secret features that we think will really knock your socks off!