Random Ideas, NewsMap - CourseSolver

[shae]

I've had two interesting ideas recently

Comments

[darius]

http://outside.in/ is supposed to cover the first idea, I get the impression.

The second one sounds worthwhile!

[catamorphism]

I think your second idea is good, but I disagree that "nobody goes to college to learn something". You can learn something at just about any college or university if you take the initiative, though there are a lot of schools -- maybe almost all -- where it's very easy to get a degree without learning something. However, attending a four-year university is probably almost never the most cost-effective or time-effective way to learn a given amount.

[blacktigr]

I would talk to Ed about the second one. Since he's the master of doing it by hand/with computer assistance, he'd probably have some really good ideas.

[titivillus]

As to your second idea, a friend of mine and I tried to do something similar, mostly just the scheduling aspect(I want to avoid this time of day, etc.) but what we discovered was, other than the "bulk" freshmen year classes, most colleges/degrees are so sparse in their offerings that there was only ever one or two schedule options, and they were pretty obvious. For reference, my school had about 9000 students, and my friend went to a school with 25,000. The ECE dept at my school, for instance, only had about 150-200 students at any one time