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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

#61

Post by kriro »

Back in the day when I was a student, some other student built a php based support forum with uploads for stuff you wrote during lectures and tests ordered by professor and ratings, discussion about lectures and test prep etc.

It was the de facto meeting and exchange place for all things related to that degree and was great value, I skipped quite a few classes that had good material and opted for self study. Must have saved me lots of hours. The most interesting thing was that there wasn't much pure leeching. Most people that used it went out of their way to help new students, provide lessons learned etc. Some professors actually had accounts (sometimes "undercover", was always fun when they got "exposed")

The guy started it when he started his BA (equivalent) and wrote his MA thesis about it and then the side faded away when he graduated (but by then there was other stuff available anyways)

Wasn't sophisticated at all but man was it useful. Talk about identifying customers and fixing their problems :) /old story

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#62

Post by CalRobert »

The more I reflect on my time at university, the more I realize it was an utter and complete scam. Fortunately I was lucky enough to attend junior college for a year and a half after graduating, took classes that I actually wanted to take instead of whatever BS was prescribed by my program, and didn't deal with manipulative twits for professors who held me hostage, forcing me to do their research for them before they'd let me graduate. The sooner academia dies, the better. I certainly won't shed any tears.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#63

Post by aragot »

obblekk wrote: post #3

Academia, and the Ivy League in particular, prides itself on being rigorously open, on providing broad access to all knowledge to advance intellectualism. In this regard, academic institutions often attack governments and corporations that intend to limit its free speech, but on the rare chance that this spirit of openness works against the institution, they take a hard liner approach to censoring it. The basic reaso…

Start up idea: Glassdoor for universities. It's a worldwide problem and choosing the wrong class can harm your curriculum, you may play of fer to make sales.

... And local universities won't shut it down. Unless, of course, it's filtered by UK's pornitical filter.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#66

Post by misterjangles »

cinquemb wrote: post #22
obblekk wrote: post #3

Academia, and the Ivy League in particular, prides itself on being rigorously open, on providing broad access to all knowledge to advance intellectualism. In this regard, academic institutions often attack governments and corporations that intend to limit its free speech, but on the rare chance that this spirit of openness works against the institution, they take a hard liner approach to censoring it. The basic reaso…

Universities today have become a text book example of bureaucracy at its finest. Not to say bureaucracy in itself is good or bad, but I think John Stuart Mill was spot on in his remarks upon them: "A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy". Which I guess in the context of most universities today (at least in the united states from my experience), seem to have become hollow shells of their former selves, or…

I think universities have always been this way. It's ironic because they are places of learning and exploring. But only when the topics do not concern the running of the institution itself.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#68

Post by holychiz »

Fuxy wrote: post #60

Typical 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 h…

let's not go overboard here. it's one institution, not the whole country. see other counter-examples posted here.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#69

Post by polymatter »

eterm wrote: post #58
polymatter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for sharing! That site is brilliant.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#70

Post by kriro »

creatio wrote: post #54
tikhonj wrote: post #16

Some 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...

Constraint programming would be a good start, you can also google nurse scheduling problem.

You might want to research Prolog (since the Prologs tend to have good CS libraries), specifically Eclipse (not to be confused with the IDE): http://eclipseclp.org/

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