The future was yesterday

Columbia is no stranger to website redesigns, but here comes an overhaul that will actually matter. As CUIT so eloquently phrases it on the CourseWorks home page, this fall “CourseWorks Begins Transition to New CourseWorks.”

The current CourseWorks is based on the Prometheus course management system and has been around since 2001—to put that in perspective, if CourseWorks were a child, it would be entering 5th grade. It’s seriously been a long time coming, and CUIT has been planning this since 2008, but Columbia is finally starting to begin its transition to a new course management system, based on the open source Sakai Project.

In a press release, CUIT hails this system for its “state-of-the-art online learning and information sharing tools,” includes discussion boards, grade books, and file drop boxes. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Sakai will have largely the same offerings as CourseWorks, only presumably now it won’t go completely offline whenever PrezBo plugs in too many things in his office or something. Moreover, some new features of Sakai include some sort of live chat/IM system, polling, wikis, and what CUIT’s press release ominously refers to as “social media.”

CUIT will begin transitioning classes to this new system in waves, starting in Fall 2011 and concluding in Spring 2013. First up are classes from the Med Center, School of Social Work, Anthropology and Statistics departments, and select “early adopters” from SEAS, the J-School, and Architecture department. With this transition, Columbia will finally be joining a long list of institutions that have already adopted Sakai, which has been around since 2004. Don’t get too excited though: to quote one student from a school already using Sakai, “It’s not pretty, but it gets the work done.” To quote another, “It sucks.”

Generic Sakai website via Sakai Project

Columbia just never seems to be satisfied with their Web presence. The SEAS site recently got refreshed— by our count the fourth redesign of this year. (For those keeping score, first came Cubmail, followed by the main page, and then Barnard.) Talk about vanity/ vigilance! The SEAS site was actually revamped just 18 months ago.

In this particular pecking order, SEAS may come last, but certainly not least: the new SEAS website seems to be an improvement over the old one. The placement of links to the SEAS Bulletin and Columbia Directory are more prominent, and when compared with the old one, the new Engineering logo is more consistent with the visual style of the other Columbia schools’ logos. Still, it adopts the curious drop-down menu system similar to the Barnard website, and there are some broken links. Womp.

Two of Columbia’s major websites have just received extreme makeovers – the SEAS site, whose color scheme and photo-of-new-dean remind visitors of Columbia College, and the Student Affairs site (shown above), which reminds the administration of its promise to render the entire Morningside Campus in 2D.

Major overhauls in PR are never taken lightly at Columbia, and dissenters to the new designs surely abound; however, both new websites feature several indisputable improvements over their previous versions.  For example, they each employ a number of nifty animations – most notably, the Student Affairs homepage now features a fitting background of clouds traveling listlessly across the screen (the sky, of course, a ringing blue).  And while it may take some getting used to, the sites are well-organized and easier to navigate than ever.  So on behalf of our administrators and Brad Paisley, welcome to the future.

It’s truly a tragedy of convenience that, apart from class and free food, the sole reason we leave our rooms is to find out what’s happening on campus.  And what better way to indulge our laziness than to eliminate the flyers that clutter campus walls and move them online?

PostATime.com, the first branch of a site with national ambitions, attempts to do just that. Its mission is to “replace those useless and wasteful posters” with what the site terms “event based social networking,” say its Columbia caretakers, Michael Vitrano and RJ Assaly, CC and SEAS ’12 respectively. (Vitrano and Assaly also say they weren’t aware of the existence of the strikingly similar CampusPlaybook–or the short-lived CampusBoxOffice–before launching PostATime).

Upon creating an account, Bwog found that the site was quite easy to use.  Plus, the interface is quite intuitive for users of CubMail or MySpace.

Actually, the site looks strangely similar to CubMail and MySpace.  A comparison and further discussion, after the jump.

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From the “Not Again” Department: Bored@Butler has internal competition.

For those of you holed up in Purgatory Butler last week for midterms, Bwog’d bet that you saved a tab in your browser for Bored@Butler (boredatbutler.com).  The site is an anonymous message board for Columbia students stuck in the library to post their thoughts.

According to WikiCU, founder Jonathan Pappas (CC ’06) wanted to see what Columbia students would say if the social filter were removed.  An easier approach would be to read Youtube comments, however; even without complete anonymity, there’s hardly a filter.

Though the site quickly hosted thousands of posts in the days after its launch in February 2006, it has since degraded into the repetitive drivel of sex-starved students.  As of the publication of this article, the current topics included general hate, the possibility of random hookups, and  Stephan‘s hair.  More telling are this week’s “best”: “Oh, I need a blowjob.  Really” and a girl reportedly giving herself a breast exam in Milstein.  Honestly, Bwog is amazed by the introspection shown by Ivy Leaguers.

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A politically active tipster clued us in to CountMore.org, a neat website that allows your to figure out whether it makes more sense to vote here, in New York, or in your home state. (Though chances are it’s probably going to make more sense — or just as much sense — to vote in the latter.)

Anyway, it’s great because then it provides you with stuff like absentee ballot deadlines and the 2004 election’s margin of victory.

Satow Room Bureau Chief Martha Turewicz attended last night’s CCSC gathering, during which a move was made toward granting all student council reps voting rights.

President George Krebs started last night’s CCSC meeting off with a bit of tough love, declaring, “Like it or not we’ll start at eight o’clock and everyone who’s late will suffer the embarrassment of being late.”

Fortunately nobody suffered this terrible embarrassment, with the added benefit of not having to suffer sitting thorough an overly long meeting, as last night’s affair ended at 9:16 PM sharp.

Beyond his iron-fisted control of the schedule, Krebs also exhibited his more laid back side — a side we’re quite familiar with — in announcing that in the coming weeks, he will host a party which is “fully on the record.”

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Let’s welcome to the Internet Career Center’s new post-MonsterTRAK website. (Hopefully you remembered to remove all resumes, cover letters, etc. that you might have saved in the old system.)

Features of the new website include lengthy sections about everything from interviewing for jobs (“Men: Never wear white socks”) to the art of negotiation and a graph that illustrates how your skills can translate into jobs: for instance, a skilled researcher might be interested in “clinical research, market research, policy research, or magazine research.”  Plus, according to the website, “you will also be able to maintain a person calendar,” which is a calendar designed specifically for people, just like you!

LionSHARE will be releasing how-to tutorials in the coming weeks with information about using the new system and presumably an email annoucing its existence.

Oh boy, the “New Facebook” that you’ve been hearing nothing about is here. What’s different about New Facebook? Well, for one thing, it’s certainly wider! And your wall posts are outlined in gray. But apparently there are other differences, and the madman behind this creation has explained them all in his Facebook blog:

• The Publisher lets you put content on your own Wall. Like writing on your own Wall, but now it’s called The Publisher. 

• Size matters: You can adjust the size of things on your profile, “to promote the things you care about most, and demote the stories you don’t find as interesting.” 

• Your own Wall will stalk you.  “The Wall now surfaces the most recent and relevant information—in the form of posts of stories—about you. We believe that having a constant stream of information, or ‘feed’ is the most effective way to learn about and keep up with friends.”

Facebook loyalists have been rallying to the defense of New Facebook, pointing out that the new photo browsing function is easier to use.  But go see for yourself, and then choose a side, for the question of New Facebook allegiance is surely the defining one of our generation. 

UPDATE: More terror lies ahead after the jump.

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