A few semesters ago, I had to switch around a bunch of my classes. I went through my school’s class database and made notes of the new classes I wanted to take and their course registration numbers. After writing down all of the information, I set a timer that went off every fifteen minutes, 24 hours a day, to figure out when there were openings for the classes I wanted.
That was not a very smart idea. I was very tired, frustrated, and the first week of classes was incredibly stressful.
Luckily, there is a much better way to register for college classes and to figure out when there are openings for a certain class or section. Today, I will be sharing my review of Coursicle and how I can register for a class in 30 seconds.
What is Coursicle?
Coursicle is a college course scheduling app that makes registering for classes much simpler. Students can plan their schedules and get notified when seats become available in closed or waitlisted classes. Students can browse the course catalog using filters and find information about class names, locations, professors, and more. For some schools, students can also get the names of textbooks.
Coursicle is a free app available for iOS and Android. Users can pay for a $5 in-app purchase to track unlimited classes, or they can refer the app to three friends and track unlimited courses for free.
Download links
Related links
Participating schools
There are over 100 schools that participate in Coursicle across most of the United States. All major Virginia public universities support Coursicle, and new schools are being added frequently. To request your college, send the developers a message on their website.
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Coursicle Interface
The Coursicle interface is fairly simple to navigate:
- User selects their school
- Then, user adds a class to track
- User gets a notification when the course has an open seat
- Once a course is open, user can register for course on class registration website
Coursicle does not automate registering for classes, they just notify which classes are available. Students still have to register for courses themselves.
Related links
How to add and remove classes
To add a class in Coursicle:
- Click the plus icon on the app home page
- Scroll through all available courses, or run a search for a specific class
- To see all of the classes for a particular department, enter the prefix (e.g IT)
- To find a specific class or section, type in the full course name (IT 104, IT 104-006)
- Click the course name to add it to your list of courses to track.
To remove a course in Coursicle:
- Select the course on the app homepage
- Click the “untrack” button at the top of the screen
- You will no longer receive notifications about this course
What to do when you get a notification
If a course becomes open, a phone notification will pop up that says the course has seats available. For example, if I was tracking EDUC 203-001, I would get a notification that says “EDUC 203-001 has been changed from closed to open.” I do not get a notification if a class goes from open to closed.
Once you get a notification, check the name of the class or course registration number to ensure it is the correct class. From there, go to your college’s course registration website and enroll in the class. Again, Coursicle does not automate registering for classes, they just notify which classes are available.
Using Coursicle with large print
I was thrilled to see that Coursicle pairs beautifully with the large text on my phone. I can easily read which classes I am tracking and which ones are available.
When I’m selecting classes to track, sometimes the last letter or two gets cut off. This does not bother me, as I usually type out the full course name and section when searching for a class.
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Using Coursicle with a screen reader
Coursicle works relatively okay with a screen reader. Students can track a course’s status by clicking on the name of the course on the app home screen. From there, they can find out if the course is open, closed, or waitlisted.
TalkBack did not recognize the add course button on the bottom right side of the screen. For some reason, VoiceOver recognized it as “Button 2.” The button does not change locations, so a student should be able to figure out where it is.
When searching for a class, I recommend typing in the prefix for the class to search for available classes in that department. This prevents users from having to read information about every single class from A to Z. For example, if i was registering for assistive technology classes at my college, the prefix would be EDAT.
Related links
- How To Use VoiceOver For Beginners
- App Accessibility Checklist for Low Vision
- Why I Study Assistive Technology
What I use it for
Here are some examples of how I have used Coursicle:
- Registering for a popular professor’s class
- Tracking registration for a last-minute class change
- Seeing if there are other professors teaching a course
- Adding new classes before the semester starts
- Transferring into virtual classes as needed
Related links
Should I download Coursicle?
Coursicle has helped me tremendously with scheduling classes for college, especially when I have to register at weird times. I don’t have to set an alarm or panic over whether I’ll get into a class, because Coursicle does all of the stressful work for me- all I have to do is type in five numbers on my college’s course scheduling website and I am good to go. I highly recommend downloading Coursicle and using it to schedule college classes- it’s helped me a lot this semester!
