Higher education can be stressful, especially when it comes to time management. College students may accidentally miss their classes because of losing track of their class schedules, which are subject to change. Now thanks to Li Tiancheng, a junior at the College of Big Data and Internet at Shenzhen Technology University (SZTU), there is a mini app called “iSZTU” that helps students keep track of all class timetables. Since the app was put into service last February, half of the university’s students have registered as users, and daily visits are exceeding 2,000. As a matter of fact, Li envisioned developing such a mini app as early as when he first entered the university. “I found it caused headaches for my fellow students to check class schedules in a convenient and quick manner since the classes are different each week. The timetables are getting complicated as there are more optional courses, to a point that some of my fellow students make the class timetables their screensavers to keep them updated. But I don’t think this will solve the problem. So I resorted to technology for a solution,” said Li. A programming lover since childhood, Li said he didn’t encounter any big difficulties during the process of building the mini app. “It took me one week to finish it. I invited my fellow students to be the first users for feedback in order to help me improve it,” Li said. There is no lack of Internet talents like Li in universities across the city. Three juniors from the Computer Science Department of Southern University of Science and Technology of China embedded the university’s facilities into the map of a popular online game, which proved to be well-received among teachers and students. Two other juniors from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen developed a mini app featuring the school’s map that provides directions. (Yang Mei) | 