In the 2015 competition, students were asked to “Imagine MIT” … 20 years in the future. Submissions addressed what education at MIT might look like in 20 years. And, how much student life might change and what technologies we might be using. The iCampusAccessibility and Team a14z teams both approached this in unique ways and presented their vision to the judging panel on April 16, 2015.

The grand prize winning iCampusAccessibility team of William Li, ‘G and Dhruv Jain, ‘G provided a vision for a more accessible MIT. And runner-up Team a14z with members Colin McDonnell, ‘16; John Peurifoy, ’18; Gabriel Ginorio, ’18 and Sam Van Cise, ’18 explored the exponential future provided by computers and virtual reality to change the campus experience.

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.

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

Imagine MIT … 20 years in the future! What will education at MIT look like? How much will student life change? What technologies will we be using? We challenge you to Imagine MIT in the future.

Important Details

The 2015 iCampus Prize marks a departure from past years–this year we’re asking you to help Imagine MIT in the future! The 2015 competition is a three round competition awarding prizes worth at least $5,000.

• Info session: Thursday, February 5th, 2015, 12-1pm, Room 5-233
• First Round – Submission Due: Monday, March 16th, 5pm
  (Idea Pitch/Feedback: Wednesday, March 18th, 3-5pm, Room 4-145)
  Share your initial thoughts with the review panel. This is an informal feedback session where we’ll discuss your ideas and help you improve them for the second round.
• Second Round – Storyboard Poster Session and Presentation: April 1 or 2, Exact Date TBA, Room TBA
  In this round you’ll present your vision for the future in the form of a storyboard, and you’ll present to the review panel. We expect 4-6 teams to be selected to compete in the final round. These teams will receive a $500 stipend that can be used to help produce their final presentation.
• Final Round Presentation and Competition: Date TBA, Room TBA
  The finalists will give a presentation, share a video or demonstrate their Imagine MIT vision of the future of living or learning at MIT.
• Award Presentation: Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 4-5:40pm, Room 10-250
  The winner will be recognized at this year’s MIT Awards Convocation.

Presentations

The two finalists in the 2014 iCampus Student Prize competition participated in a poster session and gave presentations to the judging panel on May 2, 2014.

Daryl Neubieser and Michael Everett present OfCourse

Aidan Bevacqua demonstrates MIT Locate

Photo Credit: Brandon Muramatsu

2014 Winners

Grand Prize Winner: OfCourse

Source: Brandon Muramatsu

OfCourse

To allow students to create their course schedules, OfCourse allows for a quick copy-and-paste data entry, aggregates all the useful information from MIT sources, and makes recommendations based on course requirements and how much other students with a similar background enjoyed a class.

The start of the school year is marked by the (mad) scramble of students figuring out what classes to take next. MIT’s Course Catalog and Evaluations are difficult to sort and filter for each student’s needs. Other tools help pick out only what is required, and takes too long to enter classes. Other options only help when students know the classes they will be taking.

Daryl Neubieser, ’16, and Michael Everett, ’15 developed OfCourse to address these issues. OfCourse allows for a quick copy-and-paste data entry, aggregates all the useful information from MIT sources, and makes recommendations based on course requirements and how much other students with a similar background enjoyed the class. According to Dean Freeman, the head of freshman advisors, this would also help advisors make course recommendations.

OfCourse was awarded $3,000 as the grand prize winner in the 2015 iCampus Student Prize competition.

Runner Up: MIT Locate

Source: Aidan Bevacqua

MIT Locate

MIT Locate is a smartphone and web application that enables MIT students to locate each other on campus, as well as set alerts to notify them when a friend is nearby.

Aidan Bevacqua, ’16, noticed that MIT students are always running 5 minutes late even when meeting up with friends. Every “Where are you?” text increases the tardiness. Aidan developed MIT Locate for the Web and Android mobile devices. MIT Locate uses Wi-Fi access point data to allow students to broadcast their detailed location to their friends. It can pinpoint the exact room they are in, making it more useful than other social location apps. Users can set up alerts to notify when a friend is nearby or have arrived at a particular room or building.

MIT Locate was awarded $1,500 as the runner up in the 2015 iCampus Student Prize competition.

Final Round Presentations

Video coming soon!

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 2014 competition will award up to $10,000 in total prizes.

Important Dates

• Applications Due: April 23, 2014
• Poster Session and Presentations: May 2, 2014, 1-5pm
• Winners Announced: By May 9, 2014

About the Competition

The iCampus 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 currently registered MIT undergraduate 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 our environment.

About the iCampus Prize

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology received an endowment gift of $400,000 from Microsoft Research on behalf of the iCampus research collaboration between Microsoft Research and MIT. iCampus projects demonstrated innovative applications of technology for revolutionary change throughout the Institute’s curriculum. Continuing the spirit of this collaboration, Microsoft Research endowed an award to recognize creative student projects in information technology that improve education, community, and learning. MIT gratefully acknowledges this award, and the spirit of creativity that it represents.

See the related article at MIT News.

The MIT Council for Educational Technology (MITCET) and the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (OEIT) are pleased to announce WhichClass as the grand prize winner and Lounge and EduCase as the runners-up of the 2013 iCampus Student Prize competition.

2013 Winners

Winners Recognized

Aakanksha Sarda, ’14, WhichClass, and Abubakar Abid, ’15, Lounge, were recognized during the Office of Digital Learning retreat on May 17, 2013. (Sara Itani, ’12/’G of EduCase was unable to attend the award presentation.)

Aakanksha Sarda Receives Grand Prize Award

Abubakar Abid, ’15 Receives Runner Up Prize

WhichClass: Grand Prize Winner

WhichClass

Which classes cover the material I want to learn? Which classes match my learning style/objectives? WhichClass is an online exploration tool to make it easier to filter classes, and visualize connections between classes within and across departments. WhichClass was developed by Aakanksha Sarda, ’14.

In addition to it’s primary audience of students, the judges saw the potential of WhichClass to better to understand the relationships between courses across departments. These insights are especially important as MIT continues to explore all aspects of digital learning. Aakanksha received $6,000 as the grand prize winner. OEIT will be working with Aakanksha once she returns from her summer abroad to further develop WhichClass.

Lounge: Runner Up

Lounge

The team of Abubakar Abid ’15, Abdulrahman Alfozan ’15 and Aziz Alghunaim ’15 observed that MIT undergraduates across different dorms feel that the housing assignment process, particularly for returning students, is unnecessarily slow, manual, and prone to errors. As a result, they created Lounge, an electronic platform that speeds up and automates the housing process, while giving dorms the flexibility to preserve their individual housing traditions.

Abubakar accepted the $3,000 in prizes on behalf of his teammates. During the award ceremony, he also announced that Lounge was used to successfully run Maseeh Hall’s Fall 2013 room assignment process. OEIT expects that the Lounge team will continue to refine their software and work with more dorms to implement it in future years.

EduCase: Runner Up

EduCase

EduCase bills itself as the easiest, quickest, and cheapest way to record video lectures – no cameraman, no hours wasted editing. A professor walks into a class, folds open his EduCase, and presses a button for a hassle-free-lecture-recording experience. The EduCase team includes Sara Itani, ’12/’Grad and Adin Schmahmann, ’13.

The judges were very interested in the potential of EduCase to help streamline the process of recording lecture videos as MIT expands further into digital and online learning. OEIT will work with the EduCase team as they continue to develop the project.

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 2013 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. We have selected the five winners, which are described below, that will each receive a $1,000 prize. The first round winners are then 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.

First Round Winners

The 2013 iCampus Student Prize first round winners are:

• EduCase: EduCase is the easiest, quickest, and cheapest way to record video lectures – no cameraman, no hours wasted editing. Professor walks, folds open his EduCase, and presses a button for a hassle-free-lecture-recording experience. Team: Sara Itani ‘Grad, Fang-Yu Liu ‘Grad, Riccardo Campari ‘Grad, Adin Schmahmann ’13
• Lounge: Lounge, speeds up and automates the housing reassignment process at MIT. Team: Abubakar Abid ’15, Abdulrahman Alfozan ’15, Aziz Alghunaim ’15
• Terminus: Terminus is a text-based adventure game, aimed at teaching the player to use the command line with basic commands. Team: Michele Pratusevich ’13, Shawn Conrad, MEng ’13
• touchBase: touchBase has created a business card that looks and feels like a traditional paper cards, but its information can be downloaded to a touchscreen smartphone with just a simple tap to help admits find one another after Campus Preview Weekends (CPW). Team: Sai To Yeung ’14, Frank Ni ’14, James Allen ’16, Jon Warneke ’15
• WhichClass: Which classes cover the material I want to learn? Which classes match my learning style/objectives? WhichClass is an online exploration tool to make it easier to filter classes, and visualize connections between classes within and across departments. Team: Aakanksha Sarda, ’14

The judging panel included Edwin Guarin from Microsoft, Luong Hoang from Microsoft, Vijay Kumar from OEIT, Brandon Muramatsu from OEIT, Paul Oka from Microsoft Research, and Oliver Thomas from Information Systems and Technology.

Final Round Competition

The final round is scheduled for Wednesday, May 1, 2013 from 3-6pm in the Stata Center. 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.

Which classes cover the material I want to learn? With the introduction of new flexible/interdisciplinary majors, new classes and the likely divergence of a studentʼs interests from their advisorʼs/upperclassmen friendsʼ, it is getting harder for students to identify the best classes to take, especially to learn about material at the intersection of traditional fields.

Which classes match my learning style/objectives? Some students prefer lab-heavy classes, others prefer PSets. Some students want a light class to make time for a UROP, others want the 30 hrs/wk monster. How good the textbook is matters differently to students, etc etc. While Subject Evaluations collect plenty of information, it is locked up in a hard to access and compare format.

WhichClass is an online exploration tool to make it easier to filter classes, and visualize
connections between classes within and across departments.

• Filter classes by learning preferences. Interactively select classes based on Subject Evaluations
  (workload, feedback, overall rating etc), enrollment, professor, department etc.
• Visualize connections between classes. Quickly see (in a dynamic graph) which classes cover
  similar material (within and across departments). Also see connections based on professor, etc.

WhichClass has the potential to make the class selection process significantly faster and easier. It will reduce search processes like the one in the example to just a few minutes, and make it much easier for students to leverage the rich diversity of classes offered by different departments (as well as the information locked up in Subject Evaluations) to make better choices.

Team: Aakanksha Sarda ’14

Campus Preview Weekends (CPW) at MIT plays a big role in students’ decisions on whether or not they want to come to the school for the next four years. A key factor for students is their experience with the people that they meet that weekend, particularly other admits.

Oftentimes, the first thing admits do after the visit is try to find the other admits they meet on Facebook. While sometimes successful, other times it can be a frustrating process because of issues such as forgetting how to spell their names, multiple entries of the same name, etc. MIT has tried to tackle this problem in the past by distributing USB devices that allow for the exchange of contact information via infrared signals, but this has quickly become obsolete in the increasingly mobile world.

touchBase has created a business card that looks and feels like a traditional paper cards, but its information can be downloaded to a touchscreen smartphone with just a simple tap. They want a pack of these personalized business cards to be given out to each admit during CPW as a part of their welcome package.

The business cards leverage of the capacitive touch technology that is present in all touchscreen smartphones, regardless of operating system. Embedded within each card is a thin layer of conductive material. The conductive material in each card is arranged in different dot patterns, thus registering as if they were “fingers” touching the phone at different positions. When the card is tapped on a smartphone, the associated app will identify the unique pattern and download the contact information from a cloud server. Prior to coming to CPW, users can specify what information they are willing to share via the cards. If they wish, users can even choose to provide a link to their Facebook accounts to make for easy “friending”.

Team: Sai To Yeung, ’14, Frank Ni, ’14, James Allen, ’16, Jon Warneke, ’15

As a freshman coming to MIT, many students have no clue what a terminal was or how it could be used to interact with the computer. The main computing environment available to students in Athena clusters is Ubuntu Linux. While using the terminal is not required to use the Athena computers, the ability to navigate the command line interface is a powerful tool in computing at MIT. The problem is clear: students who first are exposed to the Linux terminal on Athena do not know how to approach learning it they learn painfully slowly by accidentally hearing from someone else that a particular command exists. These students are not using the Athena computing environment to the fullest extent.

Gamification, play, and fun are arguably the most effective ways of learning a skill. The Terminus team wanted to combine play with the tedious (and often difficult) task of learning how to navigate a command line. At the same time, they wanted to throw some nostalgia at MIT students. The solution they came up with was a text-based adventure game entitled Terminus, aimed to teach the player to use the command line with basic commands. You are placed into a magical world where you are forced to explore the world with the “cd”, “ls”, and “less” spells you are allowed to “touch” objects, “mv” things, and interact with interesting characters and locations. Your tasks are numerous and interesting you are forced to explore every item you see, talk to every character, and visit almost every location. But you are allowed to do this at your own pace with minimal guidance. Rather than spinning this as a learning experience, the main goal is to have fun exploring a textbased adventure world.

They want to make the command line less scary, but at the same time riveting and engaging. With the addition of graphics, a plot line, comical text, and a set of silly challenges, we hope to immerse the user in the world, getting them more familiar with the standard commands used in a terminal interface.

Team: Michele Pratusevich ’13, Shawn Conrad, MEng ’13

We have observed that MIT undergraduates across dorms feel that the housing assignment process, particularly for returning students, is unnecessarily slow, manual, and prone to mistakes.

Lounge, speeds up and automates the housing reassignment process. In particular, Lounge has:

• Digitized floor plans and rooms for better representation, display, and accessibility.
• Zero-step log-in system (simply click on a dorm building) that uses certificates to directs users directly to their floor.
• Allows users to search easily through rooms, and users
• Supporting various housing assignment methods (pure lottery, points, tiers), allowing to quick adoption by different housing committees
• Efficient way to accept rooming preferences/assignments from users, including options for squatting, and designating roommates to choose rooms for both/multiple partners
• Synchronous lottery system that allows multiple users to select rooms at the same time, to speed up lottery process
• Intuitive interface that distinguishes between admins and residents, allowing only the former to start lotteries, add residents, and set building information.
• Flexible interface based on residences, which can be dorms or individual floors, administered by the appropriate housing chairs
• Convenient .csv-format export feature that will allow information to be stored and manipulated offline.
• Decentralized approach that allowing appropriate “super-admins” to quickly add new buildings, floors, and rooms
• Clear instructions and tips where appropriate to guide users quickly through the web app.

Team: Abubakar Abid ’15, Abdulrahman Alfozan ’15, Aziz Alghunaim ’15