A new, exclusive website will be available to Iowa State students on March 23rd. The site, called Central Campus, brings together students’ favorite academic websites in one location, and is the result of five talented engineering students’ capstone design project.
Computer engineering seniors Micah Beeman and Kristen Muehlenthaler, and software engineering seniors Jeremiah Evans, Adam Lemker, and David Loutsch formulated Central Campus for CPR E 491 and 492. These capstone courses are completed over two semesters, with the first focused on design and the second on implementation.
The result of a project proposal drafted by Google, the team is working under the supervision of Muthu Muthusrinivasan, a Google employee and former Iowa State graduate student of the group’s advisor, ECpE Professor Manimaran Govindarasu.
The team says it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be working with Google on their senior design project.
“Working with Google has made our capstone project both interesting and stimulating,” says Muehlenthaler. “Our client has given us insight on being creative and thinking outside the box as well as a great business perspective of creating a software application.”
The team wasn’t given much initial direction in terms of requirements for the site, so members were excited to bring something completely new to the table that could help students make important decisions, such as choosing their courses.
“Central Campus is an academic social networking site that features functionality and information from WebCT, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Rate My Professors as well as the official Iowa State University website. Having all of this in one place will make things more convenient for the students who use them,” explains Evans.
Central Campus pulls information such as courses offered, the professors teaching those courses, and the students enrolled, from Iowa State’s websites in order to group students and faculty in corresponding class forums. Students who are currently on the course list or have previously taken the course can leave comments, anonymously if they wish, about both the courses and their professors.
Professors who access the site can get feedback on their classes and teaching style, while students can use the information to decide which courses, sections, and professors best match their learning style.
Once the site is fully implemented, the group plans on adding other features based on feedback provided by users through a link on the site and possibly a few focus panels.
The team started with a bare-bones approach for the site to avoid overwhelming users and ensure they are meeting user needs and wants. Evans says steering away from an overly complicated site was one of the most challenging things they encountered. The team took into consideration common issues students had with all the sites they integrate on Central Campus. For example, many students feel WebCT has more features than are used, so the group focused on finding a design that was well balanced but functional.
Working diligently, the group stayed on task and made considerable progress. In the first semester, they set up a database, web services, and a complete a mock-up for the site. During the beginning months of the second semester the group worked hard to get their first version of the site ready for launch.
“Now that we have a final product ready to be launched, Central Campus will be available to the public with the option for users to leave comments about courses and professors as well as feedback about the site as a whole to help us make improvements or fix bugs.” says Evans.
The team plans to get traffic to their site quickly through a variety of marketing methods.
“We will send the site link out to all our friends and let it spread from there,” says Muehlenthaler. “And, we will also spread word of the site through the different groups and organizations we are in and use our classes, professors, and advisors to help us share the product.”
The current version of Central Campus is only the first of many launches this semester. The team has scheduled new releases every four to six weeks, hoping to hit three to five releases by the end of the semester.
“Our ultimate goal is to have something that works and has a competitive functionality that can be a valid alternative to Blackboard or WebCT for the university,” Evans says.
As graduation approaches, the group is beginning to think about their futures and what will become of their website. Evans and Muehlenthaler agree that this semester’s conversations will focus primarily on who the stakeholders are, who is most interested in the website, and where to take it from here.
“We all think it would be an interesting to continue our project after graduation if Google or Iowa State decides to invest more in it,” Evans says. “Maybe we will be able to find teams of students, staff, or faculty from other universities who are willing to work with us so we can roll this out to multiple universities.”