With Mocha, Banner, the Critical Review and course preview pages filling laptop screens this shopping period, students continue to find themselves without a one-stop web destination when shopping classes. While administrators have expressed openness to centralizing the course selection process, there are currently no plans for creating an all-encompassing tool.
The freedom to explore a wide variety of course offerings is integral to shopping period and the New Curriculum, but many students spend a significant amount of time navigating through various websites to build potential schedules, check space availability, read up on professors and glance at syllabi.
Mocha was launched in 2006 by undergraduate students and immediately became a popular tool for planning shopping period. Through the website, students can experiment with potential schedules in an easily viewable format and compare Brown bookstore prices to Amazon's for a course's required and recommended texts.
But Mocha does not allow students to see if a course has space available or give them the ability to directly register for a course.
And because neither the University nor Computing and Information Services supports the site, all of the course data must be gathered through "screen scraping," according to Christopher Keith, director of information technology. "They use a robot to generate — or to visit — the self-service pages to generate all the course information," he said. This means Mocha's information can be outdated.
Course Scheduler, a tool in Banner, was launched in March 2010 to mixed reviews from the student body. The site imitates many of Mocha's features, but because it is run through Banner, students can check course availability and register for courses directly. But, unlike Mocha — which allows students to compare new and used prices for textbooks sold at the Brown bookstore and through Amazon — the tool only lists bookstore textbook prices, which tend to be higher than those on Amazon.
"The interface isn't as nice as Mocha, but it has a lot of potential," Paul Kernfeld '12 said in a March 2010 Herald article. Because Course Scheduler has CIS support, the course data is updated regularly. Course Scheduler also allows students a more detailed look into courses, such as course restrictions. The site links to other Brown sites like the Critical Review, which features professors' ratings, and Course Preview, where students can view syllabi that professors have uploaded.
"I think a lot of the limitations now of why there's not one central site has to do with the fact that the data currently isn't available to outside developers," Keith said.
But in the future, course information may become available through an application programming interface — which could allow outside access to Banner's data — according to both Keith and John Styer, director of enterprise application services. Through the Course Metadata Application Program Interface Project, CIS is hoping to create a tool that would make it easier for developers to use Banner information, Keith said. CIS hopes to finish the project, which began at the end of last year, later this semester, Styer said.
The project is intended for the use by department pages on the Brown website, but the data could be used to consolidate course shopping websites as well, Styer added.
Jenny Tsai '14 said she uses nearly every website available to her — including MyCourses, Amazon and Gmail — when shopping classes. Tsai said she usually has "at least 12 Critical Reviews" open.
Tsai said a consolidated tool would ease a process she often finds stressful.
"They all have avenues that lead to each other, but it's not one linear path," she said.
Tara Noble '12.5, on the other hand, said she uses Mocha "almost exclusively," a habit she said she believes most upperclassmen follow. While she said she understands why students would appreciate a website that combines multiple tools, for now she said she plans to stick with Mocha because it is "generally more cohesive."
The administration understands the "modern trend" of wanting to bring features to one place, said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron. "There's a lot of good will and interest in aligning forces."
