From the File menu, a user can create new courses that are not synced with PeopleSoft. These courses are for teachers who want to track students involved in things like Senior Project and other strange courses.
Figure 2.2.3: The empty Create Course dialogue. Department is set to the teacher's department, Term is set to the current term, Year is set to the current year, Grace Days is set to 0, Decay is set to 100%, Decay Minimum is set to 0%.
The Create Course window has seven text boxes, two drop menus, and finally Cancel and Finish buttons. A user can navigate between the text boxes and drop menus by using the Tab key or clicking on the individual elements.
The Course Name text box has initial focus when the Create Course window opens, and the user can immediately type to begin filling out the field. The string must not be empty.
When the user clicks on the Department drop menu, the list of departments (retrieved from Cal Poly's servers) is pulled down as seen in Figure 2.2.4. The user then scrolls to find the department they wish the course to be in and clicks on that department to select it. The user may also scroll using arrow keys and select using Enter.
Figure 2.2.4: The Department drop menu (left) and Term drop menu (Right).
The Term drop menu lists the current term upon opening the screen and displays all four terms when clicked. The Year text box lists the current year. The year must be a positive integer and cannot be empty.
Clicking the Cancel button closes the window and discards any settings. No new course is added. The Grader tool is left as it was before the user entered the menu.
The Finish button is greyed out and unclickable until the user fills all the forms. Clicking on the Finish button before filling all the fields will produce an error dialog. Once a user has filled all the fields and clicks on the Finish button, the Create Course window closes and the Grader shows the new course on an empty spreadsheet as seen in section 2.1.