NUSMods

NUSMods
Founded 2012
Headquarters Singapore
Key people
 Tay Yang Shun
Ashray Jain
Ang Yen Ling
Liu Xinan
Xu Bili
Services Timetable Builder
Website http://www.nusmods.com

NUSMods,[1] short for NUS Modifications, is a non-profit,[2] open source [3] application built by students for students. It provides students of the National University of Singapore (NUS) with an alternative way to plan their school timetables with a user-friendly timetable builder where students can plan their timetable via drag and drop.[4]

In addition, NUSMods functions as a complete knowledge bank of NUS modules. It provides NUS students useful module-related information such as archived CORS bidding statistics, community-driven module reviews and discussions [4] which helps them in making their module selection. In January 2015 alone, NUSMods was visited 2,000,000 times and accessed it by 66,000 different devices.[2]

NUSMods’ long term goal is to become a website providing useful tools to increase the quality of the lives of students studying in NUS.[4]

History of NUSMods

[2] NUSMods was founded in 2012 by Eu Beng Hee,[5] who was then a student in NUS School of Computing. He realised that the timetable builder that NUS provided for students was not user friendly. When he graduated in 2014, Tay Yang Shun,[6] who is also from NUS School of Computing, took over the responsibility of upgrading and maintaining the application.[7] Before joining the NUSMods team, Tay, together with Toh Weiqing, founded Corspedia. The purpose of Corspedia was to publish past statistics regarding the bidding of modules in NUS in a way which is easily understood. These statistics were obtained from NUS’ website the bidding points for a single module could be compared across semesters. When Tay joined the NUSMods team, he immediately integrated Corspedia into NUSMods. Tay also contributed to NUSMods by revamping the user interface, designing a logo and making the NUSMods’ Facebook page[8] in line with the website.

Developers

Core team members

[3]

Other developers who have contributed to NUSMods currently or previously

Marketing

According to Tay Yang Shun, the developing team does not do a lot to spread NUSMods among students.[2] However, since NUSMods is developed by students themselves, they understand the common problems NUS students face when planning their timetables. NUSMods is able to solve the timetabling problem that for NUS students, making it a tool used by a majority of the students.[2] NUSMods uses social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to keep students updated about happenings in the school. Their NUSMods Facebook page is the main marketing tool used by the developers.

Open source

NUSMods is open-sourced and their source code is hosted on GitHub.[10] Anyone who is interested in helping out can view the source code and fix issues.[2]

Other initiatives integrated into NUSMods

These initiatives are by students with the aim to improve the lives of NUS students and have been integrated into NUSMods as of July 2014:[4]

Use of Application Programme Interface

NUSMods makes use of API, and it is still in its early stage of development.[13] NUSMods API consolidates and normalizes various bits of NUS module information from the following sources:

Information about the various modules offered in NUS may change several times a day. Using JSON API, together with support from CORS and JSONP, the NUSMods API is generated using statistical methods so that the API can be as fast as possible and also browsable online at http://api.nusmods.com.[20] Web crawlers are broken down into modules, written separately as Grunt tasks using simple filesystem caching and HTTP if-modified-since headers so a specific subset of information can be easily retrieved. During the developing process, this helps to reduce waiting time.

Activities

Module review contest

[2] In December 2014, NUSMods organised a module review competition where the best reviews would win cash vouchers in order to encourage students to submit their reviews on taken modules. There were also prizes for several fun categories - Funniest, Most Creative and Most Rage. The review function uses Disqus plugin which embeds photograph and videos in the reviews. In less than a month, over 200 reviews were submitted.

Future developments

[2] In the a recent interview with Tay, 29 January 2015, he mentioned the next huge release would include a user login function which would allow students to store their generated timetables in the servers so as to access it via smartphones or other devices. As part of NUSMods' collaboration with other school wide services, NUSMods has also introduced NUSWhispers (a confession pages for NUS students), and Bare Nusessities (a Humans of New York for NUS) onto NUSMods Webpage.

References

  1. ↑ NUSMods. "NUS Timetable Builder". Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Digital Senior (January 29, 2015). "NUSMods: How did a student-built application become so popular ?". Retrieved April 13, 2015.
  3. 1 2 NUSMods. "NUSMods Team members". Retrieved March 28, 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 4 NUSMods. "About NUSMods". Retrieved April 17, 2015.
  5. 1 2 Eu Beng Hee. "Eu Beng Hee’s Resume". Retrieved April 2, 2015.
  6. ↑ Tay Yang Shun. "Tay Yang Shun's LinkedIn". Retrieved March 30, 2015.
  7. ↑ Tien (December 17, 2014). "SoC Bytes: Nutty Tay". Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  8. ↑ NUSMods. "NUSMods Facebook Page". Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  9. ↑ Eu Beng Hee. "Eu Beng Hee's LinkedIn". Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  10. ↑ GitHub. "GitHub". Github.com. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  11. ↑ Citivle (April 21, 2011). "IVLE Cloud Sync". Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  12. ↑ NUS. "NUS CORS Bidding Archive". Corspedia.com. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  13. ↑ Eu Beng Hee (April 6, 2015). "NUSMods's GitHub". Github.com. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  14. ↑ NUS. "Centralised Online Registration System (CORS) Archives". Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  15. ↑ NUS. "Centralised Online Registration System (CORS) Schedule". Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  16. ↑ Citivle (April 21, 2011). "IVLE LAPI Integration Home Page". Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  17. ↑ NUS (January 5, 2015). "NUS Modules Search Engine". Nus.edu.sg. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  18. ↑ NUS (January 5, 2015). "NUS Examination Timetable". Nus.edu.sg. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  19. ↑ NUS. "NUS Living Lab". Nuslivinglab.nus.edu.sg. Retrieved April 8, 2015.
  20. ↑ NUSMods. "API Index". Api.nusmods.com. Retrieved April 18, 2015.

External links

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