So Yale students learned an important lesson - some of the staff cares much more about looking good than about helping students, and the administration of Yale would not be on the student's side in this case, because students come and go and the teachers stay.
Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
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Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#52Will someone please disrupt Academia? Tenured professors don't want you to see that many suck at teaching so any website that brings that to light is shutdown.
Problem is that Academia thinks that professors must be good at teaching and research. It's akin to wanting your Librarians to be good at Calculus and Library maintenance.
Research and teaching are separate skills, one doesn't imply the other. Research requires great amount of intelligence and imagination and dedication, while teaching is best suited for those that have great speaking abilities, great charism and slightly lower intelligence (it's easier for people of same IQ to relate). Asking to researcher to teach will detract from researching and vice versa.
One solution is to have cooldown period of research to focus on teaching. But I think R&D should be kept separate from teaching, but in the same way teaching shouldn't be bogged down by standardization.
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#53I actually built a similar, albeit simpler, course scheduling website for students of my university, UAEU. I however couldn't improve it because I feared that it might catch the eye of one of the higher-ups and lead to my expulsion. So I've left it as is. Quite a few students are using it, which is more than enough for me.
Here's the site (no domain yet):
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#54Some Berkeley students developed a similar service called Ninja Courses[1]. This lets you browse through classes, order textbooks and also shows ratings. (Although all the ratings are submitted by Ninja Courses users, I believe.) It can even automatically build a schedule for you by choosing lectures and sections that don't overlap, optimizing based on user preferences. For example: do you want more morning classes,…
How would one start to begin making such an scheduling algorithm? I'm asking for learning purposes. What should I be reading? Or their resources for basic such things...
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#55Ah, embracing innovation the British way. I recall that 6 months before one of those "date the person right next to me" sites picked up in the US, something similar was launched by some students in a UK university (a pretty high-profile one, though I can't remember which one... LSE? Imperial?). Anyway, long story short, the university IT department shut it down on the grounds that it was not appropriate use of IT fac…
So this is "the British way" even though it's being done at Yale, because you have one anecdote about something semi-similar happening at a university in the UK?
(Only semi-similar, because I think you can make a better case for shutting down a dating site using university IT facilities than for shutting down a course-info site not using university IT facilities.)
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#56So Yale students learned an important lesson - some of the staff cares much more about looking good than about helping students, and the administration of Yale would not be on the student's side in this case, because students come and go and the teachers stay.
Which is a rather odd position because it's the students who pay the bills. Of course, Yale, so it seems, feels safe for being Yale.
Let's see where online courses such as the Udacity one that starts today lead. Yale may want to reconsider their position or build their own system so they can have the metrics in place to guide their long-term strategies.
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#57Ah, embracing innovation the British way. I recall that 6 months before one of those "date the person right next to me" sites picked up in the US, something similar was launched by some students in a UK university (a pretty high-profile one, though I can't remember which one... LSE? Imperial?). Anyway, long story short, the university IT department shut it down on the grounds that it was not appropriate use of IT fac…
One acronym: ITIL [1]. The last refuge for the frustrated British Colonialist impulse [2].
[1] Information Technocracy Indoctrination Library.
[2] Disclaimer: I am 1/2 British.
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#58Sometime ago a man made a better version of the Odeon's (a UK cinema chain) website. His version was accessible but also mu h easier to use. People could use his site to buy tickets from Odeon. They shut it down and stuck with their terrible site. I'm on mobile and finding links is frustrating, but here are a few. http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02003-07-25 He did some other sites too and as far as I know they all got…
The original site is at ( http://www.dracos.co.uk/odeon/ ) where you can read about Accessible Odeon and how it was shut down.
That's the same guy behind the Accessible UK train timetable ( http://traintimes.org.uk/ ), which is an absolute life saver when trying to find quick train information on a mobile.
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who would want to upload files via the HTML standard? Shouldn't you be using some sort of SOAP API with an ActiveX control? Or maybe the users should login to their local ActiveDirectory server and transfer the file to a shared folder via SMB/CIFS. /s
The hair on my neck was raising up until I got to the /s Well played.
If he wrote a few lines more before getting to /s, could the sudden electrostatic discharge fry your computer? ;).
Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
#60Typical American double standard. We promote free speech but don't you dare use it in a way we don't approve.
Is that really free speech then? I'm not free to say/do anything you don't approve of.
And since when is it ok to threaten disciplinary action on a student that didn't do anything wrong just provided a service students desperately need.
It's like me threatening to shoot your family if you don't sell me your house.
The second one is clearly illegal this one for some reason is ok can someone enlighten me?
We're talking about these people's future in both situations?