Nation-wide college community website. Does this sound like a good idea?
 

Over the past few months I've been devoluping a community website for my university (not really for them, I'll own it). It will have a textbook exchange feature, roommate locator, forums (well organized with subforums for each class), means to rate professors and a community calendar. In the future we would like to add webbased email to the list of site features.

Working with a partner, we have decided this might go over on other campuses as well.

Can you think of any other features that might be usefull?

Do you think there's a market for this at schools around the country?

Any ideas about what we could name the site?

I wish my university had this. I think it's a great idea IF you can generate interest... It's a great concept though, I would use it if my University supported it...

Would it be free? You could probably pitch the idea to the individual Universities and sell it to them...

Interesting concept...

means to rate professors is a little dangerous -- how woudl you prevent a student who hadn't had the professor from rating them simply because their friend said he/she sucked. That'd be a tough sell to universities -- especially if you are rating tenured professors. (Note: I'm not opposed to the idea, you'd just have to have some safegaurds put in)

I'd also include cafeteria information.
Health Services information - maybe students asking a doctor/nurse
Tutorial Services -- especially for a particular class (but to not encourage cheating -- to encourage students helping students)

As far as professor ratings, there's already a site for that for most US and Canadian universities. There's really no way to safeguard against unobjective ratings, but a site geared toward a specific university, not thousands of them, would probably have more information.

I actually use ratemyprofessor.com to help in choosing classes depending on who is offering them... Steered me clear of one or two trainwreck prof's in my short university career so far.

my college has a very well developed web interface for these kinds of things...

web forum, chat rooms, classified adds, blackboards, student directory, restaurant/movie reviews, weather, grades, bursar account, email, add/drop class database links, library catalog... it just goes on and on.

ours is a home-grown app... the best example i've seen of any school's web community efforts is the University of Oklahoma's SIN (student information network).

sin.ou.edu if you want to check it out.

This sounds a lot better than the one we have at UK. The coolest thing you can do with it is access your network space via web browser.

Male: Yes it's be free. We're hoping we can make enough to cover our hosting bill by advertising.

Irate: Damn, that SIN site is pretty nice.

Do the universities have any say over the advertisers?

What's your competition? Does the school already have something like this? How do you safeguard some information?


Having classified ads is a nice feature, as well as local restaurants and reviews -- particularly those that deliver to college students.
A job posting site as well -- for local businesses as well as work study type jobs.

If there's nothing like it now -- this project could take on a life of it's own.

:putting on my project manager hat:
Before presenting it to a university, you need to define, clearly, the initial scope of what you are trying to accomplish, then phase in thru planned upgrades other functionality. Some things are just out of scope, or are just too big at the outset, it's better to start smaller and do it right, then to start huge, and have a lot o things that need to happen.

A list of nighttime entertainment would also be helpful. Maybe incorporate it into the callender. I just graduated from UF - but the trick to night life is to learn which clubs/bars had the best drink specials on any given night. If you had that organized so all you had to do was click on that website before you go out, it would be a hell of a nice feature. You might even be able to generate a bit of ad money out of it.

Oh, and ladies nights almost always win the "who's got the better drink special" game. :cool:

:Stick in the mud mode :

A good portion of the student population is not of drinking age. I'm not sure the administration would want to include drinking establishments, as it might appear (to the parents and those who are paying the bills) that they are encouraging drinking.

That might be a decision, as well, do you market to the students directly, or to the university.... Who's your audidence?

Almost all of the universities here in NC have well-established college community websites. the best I've seen so far is:

www.thewolfweb.com


it has so many features it's ridiculous.

I know on thewolfweb you can even find rides to other universities with a nifty map locator thing. (if someone is driving across the state, for example, they will put it on the map, and you can call them and ask if you can come).


all kinds of stuff like that. forums, photo galleries, it's all there. check it out!


the one for my university is www.partyapp.com

fun stuff

Yes, but a club in or near a college will crash and burn if it doesn't have an 18 and up policy. The clubs have to make sure they provide sufficient marking (wrist bands, etc.) for the drinking crowd. Advertising the clubs and specials is not necessiarily engouraging drinking. At UF, they started the "Later Gator" bus service for students. If you are a student, after 10pm, all the community transit busses run from selected stops straight to downtown - complelely for free. It runs from 10-3am. It was intended to discourage drunk driving - and works. Wouldn't that, along your line of thinking, also encourage underage drinking? And the University is paying for it! (not saying you are wrong, but more direct way of encouraging drinking - i.e. giving you a free ride there and back - have worked well elsewhere)
I doubt there will be much support from a school on this entire idea anyway. Most colleges would probably want full control over the site as well as any income generated from it. Best bet would be to act fully independent of the college.

The students. I don't want the school dictating what I can and can't do. I tried seting this up as a school orginazation... noting but red tape.

I love ya'lls comments and suggestions!!! Please keep'em comin'!!!

No, the university will not have any say over anything. I'm doing this completly on my own.

At this point I don't have any competion, no else around me is doing what I'm about to do.

Well... the school has a forum set up, but it isn't used by anyone. Other than that all the services that I'm planning on offering will be unique, except of course the professor rateings (which I'm seriousally debateing on doing at all.)

What do you mean by how I'll safegaurd some information?

www.ratemyprofessor.com

I always go there for my professor ratings. Seems to work for me!

at texas tech we have www.techsans.net
not ran by the school... ran by a few students... pretty small... but its cool...
supposedly there are some school supported forums around somewhere... but i havent tracked them down yet...