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After BOCA, U. tries to absorb Mocha
Chaz Firestone
Issue date: 10/26/07 Section: Campus News
The University intends to acquire Mocha, the student-run course-searching application, Computing and Information Services officials and Mocha's student developers told The Herald.
"We have officially decided to adopt the Mocha functionality," said Michael Pickett, vice president for computing and information services and the University's chief information officer. "By January 1, CIS will definitely own that piece of the code."
Launched in January 2006 by five students concentrating in computer science, Mocha quickly gained popularity as a user-friendly alternative to the Brown Online Course Announcement for its ease of use and "shopping cart" feature. But it wasn't until the recent switch to online course registration under Banner and the introduction of the ill-received Banner Catalog and Schedule applications that Mocha seemed to become the default course index of choice for students.
"I'd like to think that Mocha solves a lot of problems that I and a lot of other people had with Banner," said Daniel Leventhal '07, who led the original Mocha development team. Leventhal estimated that about 80 percent of undergraduates have used Mocha.
Recognizing deficiencies in Banner's course indexing systems, Pickett, Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar, who led the Banner implementation project, and CIS Director of Applications Development John Styer met with Leventhal and other members of the Mocha team over the summer and in recent weeks to discuss incorporating Mocha's features into the Banner system.
Styer said the University is committed to integrating Mocha - which is currently hosted on a computer science department server - but may take one of two paths on the way.
"One path would be to take the software that Dan and his buddies created and host it on our server," Styer said. "The other one is not to take the software, per se, but build our own program that uses their ideas and functionality."
Styer has formed a team within CIS to assess the different strategies. He said a final decision should be made by winter break, with hopes to have the new interface live by the April pre-registration period for Fall 2008. In the meantime, a link to Mocha has been added to the Banner project Web site.
"We have officially decided to adopt the Mocha functionality," said Michael Pickett, vice president for computing and information services and the University's chief information officer. "By January 1, CIS will definitely own that piece of the code."
Launched in January 2006 by five students concentrating in computer science, Mocha quickly gained popularity as a user-friendly alternative to the Brown Online Course Announcement for its ease of use and "shopping cart" feature. But it wasn't until the recent switch to online course registration under Banner and the introduction of the ill-received Banner Catalog and Schedule applications that Mocha seemed to become the default course index of choice for students.
"I'd like to think that Mocha solves a lot of problems that I and a lot of other people had with Banner," said Daniel Leventhal '07, who led the original Mocha development team. Leventhal estimated that about 80 percent of undergraduates have used Mocha.
Recognizing deficiencies in Banner's course indexing systems, Pickett, Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar, who led the Banner implementation project, and CIS Director of Applications Development John Styer met with Leventhal and other members of the Mocha team over the summer and in recent weeks to discuss incorporating Mocha's features into the Banner system.
Styer said the University is committed to integrating Mocha - which is currently hosted on a computer science department server - but may take one of two paths on the way.
"One path would be to take the software that Dan and his buddies created and host it on our server," Styer said. "The other one is not to take the software, per se, but build our own program that uses their ideas and functionality."
Styer has formed a team within CIS to assess the different strategies. He said a final decision should be made by winter break, with hopes to have the new interface live by the April pre-registration period for Fall 2008. In the meantime, a link to Mocha has been added to the Banner project Web site.