Students Develop “Reality Check” Software

So many students struggle to manage challenging, jam-packed schedules. Luckily for St. Luke’s students, several of their classmates have come to the rescue with Reality Check—a website that helps students get a real sense of the hours needed for various course loads. The software, created by Zach Brusko’s Honors Software Engineering class, is based on an analog model originally developed last year by Director of Studies Jim Yavenditti: "We wanted students to be able to have a big picture of how they were managing their time. The Excel spreadsheet was a good first step in helping students understand their time commitments, but we realized something more user-friendly would be better. The Honors Software Engineering students were presented with the challenge to create an intuitive, streamlined program and they did just that."

Head of Upper School Liz Perry said: "The students treated Jim Yavenditti and me as the ‘clients’ as the project was being developed. They scheduled meetings with us all winter to show us early versions of the website and get feedback. We had a great exchange of ideas along the way and it was exciting to see how it affected their final product." Brusko added, "Each student was responsible for a different piece of the site—from the back end to the front end and one student even acted as the project manager. Chief Technology Officer Bruce Stroethenke also shared various teaching tools including how to meet deadlines on a team-based project." He concluded, "We all learned something from the process."

This now-copyrighted program is available to all St. Luke’s families.