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Proposal title:	Personal Academic Calendar
Name:	Joung-Mo Kang
Email:	mokang@mit.edu
Date submitted:	11/01/2001
Proposal type:	Student proposal

1. Brief project description (two or three paragraphs at most)
   Most classes now maintain a web page containing updates and general information, such as the course syllabus. Most students have 4 or 5 pieces of paper with course syllabi on them, mixed in with all the handouts from the beginning of term, most of which are ignored. In addition, the students usually check 4 or 5 web sites frequently to read course updates, download psets or documentation, look up test or lab due dates, etc.

   The proposal is this: have the course information be written by the instructors and saved on a single server (hopefully in a format where it is not any more work than updating a normal web page). Then the students access this information through a single program. At the beginning of term, the student enters (or selects from a menu) the classes they are taking. The program would then download the information for those classes and present it all in a centralized format: for example, having a single calendar with all the dates relevant to those classes marked. During the term updates could be entered by the instructors and read by the program with a single click.

2. Describe as succinctly and as compellingly as you can, why you think this project is significant - from an educational perspective, a technical perspective, or other.
   Even in the limited scope of a simple calendar, this will hopefully save time for students and help them organize their schedules. I believe it will be very easy to implement as well, so there should be little cost in trying it. In addition to the syllabi, there is no limit to the additional information that could be accessed through this program, like weblinks, textbook information (it would be so incredibly useful to access that online), basically any information that might show up on a course webpage.

   Looking ahead, I believe with the advances in information technology and communications that more personalized educational tools such as this will become very important very soon. We already have classes putting videotaped lectures online for students who want to change their lecture-viewing schedule or see another point of view. Perhaps one day students will view all their lectures online, with a choice of lecturers for each class, and they would like a program that could grab the correct lectures each, perhaps during the night before automatically. Perhaps pset questions will soon be individualized to each student, and then a program to get the correct questions would be essential. This proposal doesn't go quite that far, but I believe it would be a useful and simple first step, being currently relevant and implementable while leaving plenty of room for extension in the future.

3. Who are the key participants in this project? Have they all agreed to enroll in 6.096 for the spring semester, and to continue working on this project for at least a year?
   Joung-Mo Kang, SB biology '00, currently working towards SB and MEng in 6-1. It's just me for now, and sure I'd enroll in 6.096. If this project were to be approved I would enlist the aid of 2-3 other students and contact the appropriate MIT divisions to work with them on getting the information from the instructors.

4. List two or three specific milestones to be achieved in the project by the end of the spring semester.
   After one term, a workable version of the software should be complete, both the end-user application and the server database. Anything not actually running by then should at least be spec'd out clearly. By this point it would also be important to have a clear testing plan agreed to by the MIT faculty for allowing classes to enter information to test and debug in the second term. (Since this might be somewhat dependent on the actual implementation of the database this might not be possible beforehand, but communication should be ongoing).

5. List two or three specific milestones to be achieved in the project by the end of the first year.
   In the second term, the system should undergo field testing by actual students and course instructors. Based on comments from both, the interfaces for both entering and maintaining class data, and retrieving on the students' end should be finalized. The focus should be on long term flexibility and extensibility (ie setting up the database so it can run alongside the MIT web servers for a long time, with minimal upkeep).

6. What are you requesting funding for (e.g., what equipment, UROP positions, other)?
   For equipment, a server might possibly be requested (~$2000). This depends on what MIT I/S says is the best way to serve the database...they might simply have space on an existing MIT server. However we'd want access to the server during development so if that isn't possible one might be requested, and then donated to MIT once ready to use. Otherwise all the money would go to funding UROP salaries.

7. Do you have a proposed project advisor or advisory board? Who is it?
   Not yet. Feel free to recommend some if this proposal is approved.

8. Do you have any interest in working on this project as an intern at Microsoft Research over the summer? (Saying that you want to do an internship does not make your proposal more competitive, and we cannot guarantee internships to everyone who is interested. We're just asking for the information now in order to do some early planning.)
   no

9. Any other comments or feedback you care to provide.
   Basically, I think this is a simple and easy-to-implement idea which should make things noticeably easier for students without making life too much harder for the instructors. So why not?

Notify the proposer by email when comments are made on this proposal: Yes

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