Hello All,

I work for a web development unit in the College of Engineering at N.C. State. I've been tasked with coming up with a few ideas for projects that would be useful for students at N.C. State (not necessarily in Engineering).

What I'm asking from you guys is to give me an idea of a web-related idea / project that you would have used while attending the university or would still use given the chance. Think like a student would as far as your ideas go.

Thank you for your time and I hope to get some good input!

[Edited on November 25, 2008 at 8:05 PM. Reason : politics]

11/25/2008 8:01:03 PM

How about a Campus Map that isn't 15 years old, and completely worthless to students?

You could leverage, oh I don't know.... google maps API.

Or you could just get your deparment to put online the Campus Map I made several years ago that they never implemented: http://www.snotmonkey.com/work/maps/

Do you work with Margaret Hudacko?

11/25/2008 8:23:54 PM

They're actually already doing that, Noen

11/25/2008 8:49:48 PM

a version of jobs.ncsu.edu that doesn't suck ass

a version of applyyourself that doesn't suck ass

a version of mypack portal that doesn't suck ass

a book lookup by faculty - both what they require in their classes and what they've written (include images of the covers); maybe include prices from local area stores/online retailers

a more user-friendly version of the ncsu grade distributions (hmm, actually nevermind, i think i'll give that one a go myself)

etc etc etc

11/25/2008 9:44:11 PM

Quote :

"ncsu grade distributions "

somebody in study hall made one

11/25/2008 9:49:39 PM

link plz?

[Edited on November 25, 2008 at 9:50 PM. Reason : nm found it]

[Edited on November 25, 2008 at 9:54 PM. Reason : eh, was thinking something better than that, but that's def an improvement over the current system]

11/25/2008 9:50:30 PM

just give up

there is too much work to do

11/25/2008 10:02:55 PM

Quote :

"a version of mypack portal that doesn't suck ass"

11/25/2008 10:07:09 PM

WebApp: http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/maps/beta
Air Application Preview: http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/mdwheele/airENGR
ee Revamp: http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/maps/beta/revamp

Try this out, tell me what you think. We recently showcased this at the UNC Cause conference with very positive feedback. We're welcoming any feedback from students/alumni/public. One other feature we're hoping to include is mapping of student schedules. One of the major selling points of the current application is EOS lab availability, which I think is a valuable asset for many of our students to have.

Mypack is an issue unto itself, however not an issue to my department. I'll welcome more *innovative* applications of web technology than something that is no more than a mashup of university resources in a ungraceful manner.

Give me more ideas on new applications that you want to see. Fixing mypack or jobs is not my job. I've been tasked with *new* technology.

Also, let's drop the animosity I've picked up thus far. I'm only asking for helpful input, I'm not hoping to rain on your parade or anything. I'm here to help you as the user, not to hurt your feelings.

As a side note, what makes you say Margaret Hudacko, just out of curiosity?

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 4:56 AM. Reason : oh god it's stein...]

11/26/2008 4:50:33 AM

Quote :

"As a side note, what makes you say Margaret Hudacko, just out of curiosity?"

Because Noen, myself, BigMan157 and a bunch of other people on here have worked for/with her.

Quote :

"oh god it's stein..."

I promise I'm very nice

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 8:19 AM. Reason : .]

11/26/2008 8:18:47 AM

Quote :

"How about a Campus Map that isn't 15 years old, and completely worthless to students?"

Stop making new shit and fix the old crap. It's completely unacceptable. New students dont need to be tracking a god damn bus to a building they cant find.

11/26/2008 9:31:06 AM

ignore the troll. ^.

Transportations TVS system is awesome, and a great move. It needs lots of improvements. I offered lots of ideas, but never heard back from them.

As for the new map system, I liked ee Revamp the best. Needs a few corrections though. Start the map zoomed in closer to NC State. Second, the map should be able to zoom in/out with a scrollwheel. That didn't work for me.

grade distribution tool & registration should be the same system - you should be able to input all the classes you want to take. Then all the possible classes are shown, with teacher, building, hours, days, summary, past 4 semesters worth of grade distributions, books, etc. An all-in-one stop for students to get everything they need. This will require teachers to get off their ass and choose a book, instead of waiting for the last minute. Hell, they shouldn't be changing books that often anyways. Secondly, this system should also show an interactive calender with all of these class choices (even overlapping classes, etc) so you can get a visual. There should be options to limit the number of classes shown, etc, as well as ways to input custom time blocks. In the end, the student is allowed to see and play around with schedules (allow them to be saved). Then someone can see their saved schedules, books, grade distributions, etc, all on one page. Also, on the scheduling/calender, not only should students be able to save different schedules, but have that ability to "submit" a schedule/calender, which registers you for those classes

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 9:52 AM. Reason : ,]

11/26/2008 9:51:56 AM

In reference to grade distributions and registration:

This is something that has come up in a meeting or two, so I'm glad to hear it from someone outside. We've taken serious thought into developing the system you've just describe... almost exactly as you've described it (which is a little weird, but overall a good thing I think).

The problem we've run into seems to be one of politics which I'm not even going to try to get into. Other than that, we want to do things like looking at a degree audit to determine what a student needs to take, crunching through all the combinotorics of what time classes are held, grade distributions, etc etc. We even thought to go as far as take student reviews (outside of grade distributions) into account.

One thing that has come up more than once is that if we build something that gives you the best possible schedule, individuals who register after everyone else have pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Another issue would be that professors who have a poor rating with students would have less favor in the system, resulting in lower class populations, which then causes classes to be dropped, blah blah blah.

Overall, I think this tool is needed and I agree with everything said thus far about it. In reality... well I won't go there. I like the idea.

@wdprice3: We were going to talk to trans-loc about possibly getting a feed from their gps data to display the routes on EE. A friend of ours who worked for them said they are very protective over their system, which I suppose is understandable. They have a great product. However, we dropped it at that point.

Thanks again for all input!

11/26/2008 10:41:36 AM

I wish I could remember all the ideas I had for the Trans-loc system. I'll think about it again, and if I come up with something, I'll post my ideas.

as for:

Quote :

"One thing that has come up more than once is that if we build something that gives you the best possible schedule, individuals who register after everyone else have pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Another issue would be that professors who have a poor rating with students would have less favor in the system, resulting in lower class populations, which then causes classes to be dropped, blah blah blah."

The bottom of the barrel thing already exists, and rightfully so. Those with more hours deserve their choice of schedules, leaving the newbies what's left. Our current system is all about this (based on hours, those with more get first dibs).

Secondly, teachers with bad reviews would get lower enrollments, which is the whole point. The University needs to listen to students, and this system would allow that. If certain teachers always have crappy reviews and enrollments, then they can identify the bad apples. This would also behoove bad teachers to improve. It's accountability at its finest. It's time for universities to stop blindly protecting teachers. Some teachers are horrible, and that's just that, and these teachers either need to lose their job, get training, and/or improve their methods. The university system is the only career that I can think of that protects the worst of its employees. If some of the teachers performed the way they do in other careers, they'd be out of a job in a hurry. For example, I've had a few teachers that never prepared for class, were never available outside of class, and instructed students to "Google" whatever it was that they were learning, instead of teaching us. I have no problem with a teacher saying Google something to get more information, but when teachers substitute Google for actual teaching, there's a huge problem. Negative feedback on these teachers would aid future students, and hopefully, one day, lead to that teacher improving his/her ways.

Also, what do you mean by "best possible schedule"? I don't want it to select my schedule. I want to be able to see all options on an interactive schedule and do it myself. People prefer different things and different professors. I'd stay away from anything dictated. The system should be something that allows students to do the work for themselves

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 10:55 AM. Reason : s]

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 11:12 AM. Reason : .]

11/26/2008 10:54:36 AM

Quote :

"than something that is no more than a mashup of university resources in a ungraceful manner. "

lawl, tr00f

Quote :

"We were going to talk to trans-loc about possibly getting a feed from their gps data to display the routes on EE. A friend of ours who worked for them said they are very protective over their system, which I suppose is understandable. They have a great product. However, we dropped it at that point."

it's pretty easy to see where their java app is pulling its data from if you look close enough...

11/26/2008 11:57:58 AM

Quote :

"it's pretty easy to see where their java app is pulling its data from if you look close enough..."

There's been more than one time I've wanted to "cut the middleman" and take what information is there. Then I think about how much I love my job and how much I don't want a suit.

Quote :

"what do you mean by "best possible schedule""

I was a little unclear about this, primarily because I was in a hurry to get to work this morning. What I meant was that given your degree audit and what you have already taken, a list of classes will be presented that will fit your already built schedule. It's not about restricting you to a schedule, but rather providing the most helpful results at all points of the process. Why do I need to see all the classes that currently conflict with classes I've already scheduled. Let's just grey those out and/or send them to the bottom.

So from the beginning, if I were a senior and didn't know what humanities I had left to take, I can schedule all of my major required courses (the list of available humanities narrowing as I schedule more due to time conflicts, all in real time) and then pick from the best of what's left (according to reviews by students, grade distributions, etc).

I'm not 100% sure on implementation yet to be honest. We've really only talked about this in passing. One thing is sure though. This application is going to have to be easy to use if we're going to build it. Otherwise, why bother? I'm not going to sit through having to click through 10 pages to get grade distributions. I'm not going to attempt to schedule a class, only to find that it conflicts with a course already scheduled. The biggest thing if this is going to happen is that it has to be usable, something I believe has been neglected in a few applications developed thus far. We're working with a new generation of people and it's time to start building for them.

If anyone ever worked with xtracs and I'm sure most people here have, it was a good thing in my opinion. At least with xtracs you got available courses graphical instant gratification. With MyPack/Packtracks/.../.../... (you get the idea), there's really no telling what you're going to get.

As a side note for further research: Can anyone recommend a good professor/grade distribution resource? Is pickaprof still where most people go or are there other resources available. Please don't mention university grade distribution resources

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 12:31 PM. Reason : .]

11/26/2008 12:25:49 PM

^I used pickaprof when I was in school. There is also this message_topic.aspx?topic=519039

Also when I was still in school, one of the first things I did was make a flow chart of my degree key to easily recognize co/pre-reqs for courses. As time went one I just kept updating the chart and making a plan. This was very helpful for me, especially when I was trying to get a certain professor for a certain class, that way I could visualize how skipping this class for a semester would effect my overall progress without just reading MAE XXX requires blah blah blah. Also, my senior year there were certain 400 level classes were required to take certain 400 level electives (that were only offered one semester, either spring or fall). So around my sophmore/junior years I could plan out the order of the classes I wanted in order to get into the electives I wanted. That is probably not something that merits its own project, but could be used in conjunction with some other suggestions, to help us visual learners out.

[Edited on November 26, 2008 at 12:50 PM. Reason : ]

11/26/2008 12:46:16 PM

Quote :

"If anyone ever worked with xtracs and I'm sure most people here have, it was a good thing in my opinion. At least with xtracs you got available courses graphical instant gratification. With MyPack/Packtracks/.../.../... (you get the idea), there's really no telling what you're going to get."

http://www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/tracster/ was intended to be a newer, web-based version of XTracs. I'd have liked to add more features (like some of those listed above), but it stopped being a priority shortly after it'd been developed. Sadly, it's little more than an afterthought at this point, but it does exist, does read live data and does work, so at least there's that

The other issue, of course, was that when it was developed 3 years ago or so I didn't have all these fancy JS libraries out now, so the JavaScript that makes it is... long and far too complex.

11/26/2008 1:13:29 PM

eeRevamp is pretty damn awesome.

The only thing still desperately missing is a custom "Map" view. NCSU already maintains a similar resource, so why not leverage it. Also, default it to building, not people.

Utilizing the directions routing capabilities of the API would be cool too, but I dont know how useful it would be for walking directions, as I doubt Gmaps supports that.

11/26/2008 5:29:28 PM

google maps has a transit method filter

dunno if the api does

11/26/2008 5:53:15 PM