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Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

nytimes.com

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Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#21

Post by joshdance »

AlexeyMK wrote: post #16
brianzelip wrote: post #14

The article links to a guidebook[0] of suggestions and best practices that was produced by student devs involved in such projects and who were brought together at a Campus Data Summit organized by GitHub. [0]: http://campusdata.org/guidebook/

[campusdata.org member here] - if you're working on something similar at your school and want to join forces, join the mailing list is at campusdata.org.

Love that my school (BYU) is used for the photo but we are not a member org yet. Joined the mailing list thanks for pointing that out, didn't know there was one.

Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#22

Post by joshdance »

secabeen wrote: post #5

I wonder if any of these systems are accessible to the disabled. If your awesome mobile app to grab classes means that blind or motor-impaired students lose access, is that really an improvement?

In my small experience with my college, new systems are usually better than the old system for accessibility. The old systems are terrible, log you out every 5 minutes, separate systems with separate UI, markup, access etc. But you are correct we need to think about these issues.

Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#23

Post by viiralvx »

Ha, glad to see I'm not the only one that just constantly waited for somebody to drop the class I want to register in before getting alerted.

The problem with my University (Notre Dame) is that we have everything hooked up to the Banner system . . . which is terrible. Course Search is terribly designed and not user-friendly, along with the Course Registration system not being the best either, it's quite frustrating.

Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#24

Post by pessimizer »

This has always happened, because it doesn't take a genius to create a class registration application better than the monstrosities that some horrible overpaid vendor managed to cobble together for a couple million dollars. If there's any change indicated by this article, it's that these schools aren't threatening legal action or expulsion to have them shut down.

Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#26

Post by jhalstead »

AustinDizzy wrote: post #15

I've done something similar, although not directly interactive to course registration and classes yet . My university, West Virginia University, was granted a few hundred million dollars by the US DOT and President Nixon back in the early 1970s to create a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) [0] system that would transport handfuls of students to and from the various campuses and other locations in the city. Built by Boeing…

You might be able to save some time by having Scheedule [0] add your school. It was created at UIUC, and I've found that it works very well. I know it provides some other functionality beyond class scheduling (via FB integration), but most people I know just use it to plan their schedule.

Edit: It looks like schools are added based on a voting/popularity system, which wasn't what I was expecting.

Edit 2: Classwhole [1] is another UIUC creation that's been open sourced [2] and might work for you.

[0] http://www.scheedule.com

[1] http://www.classwhole.com

[2] https://github.com/kryali/classwhole

Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#27

Post by aaron695 »

pessimizer wrote: post #24

This has always happened, because it doesn't take a genius to create a class registration application better than the monstrosities that some horrible overpaid vendor managed to cobble together for a couple million dollars. If there's any change indicated by this article, it's that these schools aren't threatening legal action or expulsion to have them shut down.

I find comments like this funny. If this is the case why not go out and make those millions?

True, you do just say anyone can make something better, so perhaps it's a labour cost but then your comment doesn't make sense since the vendor is not overpaid.

The reality is these systems are huge, often not re-usable between institutions and you are vastly under estimating their complexity.

These students are usually just improving a very small part of very large system.

Which is cool, API everything and let students make better parts of systems where it counts. That would be my lesson.

Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#28

Post by pessimizer »

aaron695 wrote: post #27
pessimizer wrote: post #24

This has always happened, because it doesn't take a genius to create a class registration application better than the monstrosities that some horrible overpaid vendor managed to cobble together for a couple million dollars. If there's any change indicated by this article, it's that these schools aren't threatening legal action or expulsion to have them shut down.

I find comments like this funny. If this is the case why not go out and make those millions? True, you do just say anyone can make something better, so perhaps it's a labour cost but then your comment doesn't make sense since the vendor is not overpaid. The reality is these systems are huge, often not re-usable between institutions and you are vastly under estimating their complexity. These students are usually just…

> I find comments like this funny. If this is the case why not go out and make those millions?

Because marketing and sales don't simply boil down to having a superior product? You're making a strong market quality efficiency argument here that I'm pretty sure that you don't even agree with.

Also, I'm happy and well compensated in my own industry.

Re: Student-Built Apps Teach Colleges a Thing or Two

#29

Post by dellsystem »

DanBC wrote: post #12
dellsystem wrote: post #3

It's always encouraging to hear about schools like Stanford and Berkeley that are actually supportive of student-run initiatives like these. I just graduated from McGill University, and throughout most of my undergrad I was one of the admins of a website (wikinotes.ca) for sharing notes and other student-created course materials. We got little to no support from the administration, despite attempts at reaching out, a…

Did that mass email get published anywhere?

It did, in one of the main campus newspapers.
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