See related article at MIT News and the MIT Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education Newsletter.

The MIT Council for Educational Technology (MITCET) and the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (OEIT) are pleased to announce CourseRoad as the grand prize winner and Dormbase as the runner-up of the 2012 iCampus Student Prize competition. CourseRoad and Dormbasewere recognized during the Institute’s Freshman Awards ceremony on May 17, 2012.

CourseRoad: Danny Ben-David, ’15 and President Hockfield
 

Dormbase: Alex Chernyakhovsky ’14, Cosmos Darwin ’15, Drew Dennison ’13, Isaac Evans ’13, and Luke O’Malley ’14 and President Hockfield

Photo Credit: Anna Babi Klein

CourseRoad and Dormbase emerged as the top projects from the final round competition where the five finalists from the first round competition were invited to present a poster and give a short presentation on their project. Judges from MIT and Microsoft evaluated the finalists in three areas: relevance to MIT, potential for impact and design.

2012 Winners

CourseRoad: Grand Prize Winner

Source: Brandon Muramatsu

CourseRoad

CourseRoad builds a user-friendly page where users can map out their classes through their undergraduate careers. CourseRoad presents the user with a vertical timeline of undergraduate semesters, and makes it easy to add, remove, and drag classes between terms. The site then provides a web of prerequisite and corequisite connections between the classes and visually alerts the user to any conflicts. CourseRoad is currently in beta testing. The CourseRoad team consisted of Danny Ben-David, ’15.

The judges were impressed with the progress that Danny made as an one person team, and thought CourseRoad could be a powerful tool for students and their advisors. Danny received a check for $6,000 as grand prize winner. OEIT will be working with Danny through the summer to further develop CourseRoad.

Dormbase: Runner-Up

The judges recognized Dormbase the potential Dormbase has to improve student-run dorm operations across the Institute, naming it runner-up for the 2012 iCampus Student Prize competition. The Dormbase team will split the $4,000 cash prize as runner-up.

Source: Brandon Muramatsu

Dormbase

Dormbase is a web-based system that provides MIT dormitories with the tools and services they need for daily operation. It provides reliable, modern, and user-friendly online services for residents, desk workers, and student administrators. The goal is for Dormbase to provide a consistent user experience across all MIT dormitories. The Dormbaseteam consisted of Alex Chernyakhovsky ’14, Cosmos Darwin ’15, Drew Dennison ’13, Isaac Evans ’13, and Luke O’Malley ’14. 

Congratulations to the winners and all that participated in the 2012 competition!

More Information

Further information on the iCampus Prize, as well as announcements of future competitions, can be found at iCampusPrize.mit.edu.

About the iCampus Prize

The iCampus Student Prize recognizes the innovative and creative application of technology that improves living and learning at MIT. The competition builds upon the entrepreneurism and spirit of service exhibited by MIT students to solve the world’s problems by focusing attention of what might be improved closer to home in MIT’s education and student life.

The competition is open to all current MIT undergraduates and graduate students, both individuals and groups. Entries must involve the use of technology to enhance living and learning at MIT, and they must be developed to the point where MIT could adopt them and integrate them into MIT.

The 2012 competition is a two-stage competition. In the first round, student teams were asked to create working prototypes, and to define the needs assessment and impact of their projects. In the first round, the winners each receive $1,000. Five of the first round winners have been invited to compete in the final round where they are vying for a grand prize of up to $10,000 and are expected to deliver fully functional projects.

The 2012 iCampus Student Prize first round winners invited to compete for the Final Round competition are:

• CasaNexus: CasaNexus will provide an easy to use interface for posting and searching for housing for the short-­‐term work opportunities many MIT students pursue to gain insights about fields or industries that they would be interested in working. Team: Connie Chan ’12 and Moji Jimoh ’12.
• CourseRoad: CourseRoad builds a user-friendly page where users can map out their classes through their undergraduate careers. CourseRoad presents the user with a vertical timeline of her undergraduate semesters, and makes it easy to add, remove, and drag classes between terms. The site then provides a web of prerequisite and corequisite connections behind the class modules and visually alerts the user to any conflicts. Team: Danny Ben-David ’15.
• Dormbase: Dormbase is an open-source dormitory database system that is flexible and expandable. The Dormbase project provides a dorm management system that can evolve overtime to suit the changing needs of the various dorms and their residents. Team: Kojo Acquah ’14, Alex Chernyakhosvky ’14, Cosmos Darwin ’15, Drew Dennison ’13, Chris Dolan ’13, Isaac Evans ’13, Dwyane George ’15, Chris Klingshirn ’15, Luke O’Malley ’14.
• STEMid: STEMid (STEM internship database) is a web platform that aggregates STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) internship listings scattered across the internet. Team: Ignatius Chen ’13, Melissa Choi, Roodolph St. Pierre and Marc-Dannie.
• Tango: Tango is an academic network that connects students to classmates from the start during class registration. On Tango, you can pick your current classes or future classes you’re interested in and see potential classmates and teammates also considering similar classes. Team: Ray Li ’12, Jessica Lin ’12, Sarah Rumbley ’12.

The Judge’s Choice Winner is:

• Nom Nom Now: Never go hungry again! Nom Nom Now allows the user to easily broadcast — and more importantly, find — free food. Team: Chen-Hsiang (Jones) Yu ‘G, David Ogutu ’14, Adisa Kruayatidee ’15.

Details on the winning projects, as well as video of the five-minute “pitches” given by the students can be found at the iCampus Prize website: http://icampusprize.mit.edu/.

The judging panel included Hal Abelson the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Jim Cain from OEIT, Edwin Guarin from Microsoft, Vijay Kumar from OEIT, Brandon Muramatsu from OEIT, Paul Oka from Microsoft Research, Pawan Sinha from Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Oliver Thomas from Information Systems and Technology.

Final Round Competition
Look for the announcements of final presentations in late-April/early-May 2012. The final round competition will include a poster session to allow guests and judges to speak with each group and learn more about the projects. The competition concludes with a lightning round of 5 minute presentations by each group. Judges for the competition will include representatives from Microsoft, MIT faculty and staff, and others.

More Information
For more information on the iCampus Student Prize, and for details on the final round competition, please visit: http://icampusprize.mit.edu/.

About the iCampus Prize
The iCampus Technology Innovation Student Prize recognizes the innovative and creative application of technology that improves the educational and student life experiences at MIT. The competition builds upon the entrepreneurism and spirit of service exhibited by MIT students to solve the world’s problems by focusing attention of what might be improved closer to home in MIT’s education and student life.

The competition is open to all current MIT undergraduates and graduate students, both individuals and groups. Entries must involve the use of technology to enhance life and learning at MIT, and they must be developed to the point where MIT could adopt them and make them part of its environment.

CasaNexus, 2012

Many MIT students pursue short-­‐term work opportunities to gain insights about fields or industries that they would be interested in working. These opportunities are offered all over the country, but in order to participate one needs a place to live. Not every summer internship program can offer housing to its participants. So in order to find housing, students turn to the Internet or the family and friends. There are problems with both approaches. The Internet has a few types of websites that don’t serve the short-­‐term temporary housing market very well. There’s Craigslist, which is a free service, but you have to be wary of scams and their website is not designed to support detailed searches; there are sites that are tailored to short term housing listing, but one has to pay to get information to connect with someone and that business model does not seem convenient for students; there are free housing search sites, but they are geared for longer term housing commitments. CasaNexus will address these needs by providing an easy to use interface for posting and searching for housing.

Team: Connie Chan ’12 and Moji Jimoh ’12.

Picking up a copy of the MIT Bulletin it’s easy to immediately discover exactly how complicated planning out class at MIT can be. Sorting between the intricate web of pre- and co-requisites while trying to figure out what the HASS and CI requirements had to do with each other quickly became a daunting task.

CourseRoad builds a user-friendly page where users can map out their classes through their undergraduate careers. CourseRoad presents the user with a vertical timeline of her undergraduate semesters, and makes it easy to add, remove, and drag classes between terms. The site then provides a web of prerequisite and corequisite connections behind the class modules and visually alerts the user to any conflicts. Meanwhile, the left vertical bar provides additional information on selected classes and generates a handy table of the user’s progress through the GIRs. Future additions to CourseRoad will allow users to select degree requirements for particular majors, to save and share their course mappings with others, and to better control course options (such as overriding prerequisites with special permission from an instructor).

Team: Danny Ben-David ’15.

Dormbase is an open-source dormitory database system that is flexible and expandable. The Dormbase project provides a dorm management system that can evolve overtime to suit the changing needs of the various dorms and their residents.

Team: Kojo Acquah ’14, Alex Chernyakhosvky ’14, Cosmos Darwin ’15, Drew Dennison ’13, Chris Dolan ’13, Isaac Evans ’13, Dwyane George ’15, Chris Klingshirn ’15, Luke O’Malley ’14.

Students looking for STEM internships, either for the summer or an academic semester, currently have no easy way to search for them. A student leaning toward a computer science major at MIT, for example, would have to look up individual university websites and individual company websites to find a CS internship opportunity. Once students have manually found links to these internship listings, they then submit separate applications to the various program coordinators. The problem now is that seeking out STEM internship opportunities is rather like trying to find a needle in several haystacks. It is a tedious, time-consuming and highly serendipitous process. Currently, there isn’t a single web portal that aggregates all possible STEM internships from small startups to large biotech firms to universities to government agencies like NASA.

STEMid (STEM internship database) is a web platform that aggregates STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) internship listings scattered across the internet with a web 2.0 user interface. It seeks to be a two-sided portal connecting students and applicants to STEM internship providers, while streamlining the application process. For students, STEMid offers tools to save and compare positions, filters (location, research topic and level) and ways to keep track of application deadlines. For internship providers, both academic and commercial, STEMid enables administrators to post internship listings and integrate the database with their own internal IT systems, thus offering a way to manage their listings in real-time.

Team: Ignatius Chen ’13, Melissa Choi, Roodolph St. Pierre and Marc-Dannie.

Tango is an academic network that connects students to classmates from the start during class registration. On Tango, you can pick your current classes or future classes you’re interested in and see potential classmates and teammates also considering similar classes. This lowers a lot of market inefficiencies and barriers to catch missed connections to possible study groups or project teammates. Furthermore, academic planning at MIT can often be daunting and filled with second-guessing. Tango helps students find upperclassmen who’ve been through similar situations. Each course page has an open Q/A forum where students can find answers to class-related questions and critical advices from veterans. Your social network shouldn’t simply be defined by classes at MIT but neither should they be limited by the same classes. Our platform also helps friends plan regular meet-ups like lunch or study-sessions by mapping out their class locations on campus throughout the week, allowing them to figure out a common meeting place.

Team: Ray Li ’12, Jessica Lin ’12, Sarah Rumbley ’12.

Nom Nom Now, 2012

Nom Nom Now – Never go hungry (and possibly miss class due to malnourishment) again! Nom Nom Now allows the user to easily broadcast — and more importantly, find — free food. Free food announcements will be parsed from our server and broadcast to all users in real time. User broadcasts (food message and photo) automatically include the user’s GPS coordinates for food stalkers’ convenience. When searching for food, the map will display the location of food closest to the user. The list of feeds contains all free food broadcasts made recently. Clicking a food item in the list evokes a display with more detailed information about the food. When there is a free food message, Nom Nom Now will notify you instantly via the message.

Team: Chen-Hsiang (Jones) Yu ‘G, David Ogutu ’14, Adisa Kruayatidee ’15.