Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Organization Now Only a Click Away for Students

Georgetown students now have access to an online interactive day planner at their fingertips.

Launched on the first day of class, CollegeCal.com features a database of the classes offered at Georgetown University and creates a personalized schedule for each user. If the class has a syllabus uploaded, the Web site automatically updates the schedule with all the assignment and test dates which can be viewed in the “Due This Week” feature on the Web site.

The Web site also includes a list of activities and sports schedules that have been uploaded by student organization leaders that users can add to their schedules, including lectures, sports games and performances.

“Blackboard was not the ultimate solution for the needs of college kids,” said Dave Kassling, Web site creator and Vanderbilt University alum. “We needed to create something that students would actually find useful, that would bring everything in a student’s life to one page.”

Before becoming exclusive to Georgetown students, the site was a public Web site open to New York University students and then sold for private use to two schools in the Pittsburgh, Pa. area. While those endeavors went well, they decided to return it to a public Web site.

“We picked Georgetown because it is an amazing school that could use a little help with the structure of its online information,” Kassling said. “At Georgetown, students are forced to look all over the Internet if they want to find their homework, campus-event information, [and] sports schedules, and much time is wasted in looking for these at different spots in the Georgetown Web space.

CollegeCal brings all of these things together, so that the student has one place to access all of their information.”

Kassling and his team are planning to open up CollegeCal to two or three more schools during the spring semester of 2009 and are also working on a new feature that would allow users to send a text message to get their homework information.

With approximately 200 students already registered, the Web site is continuing to grow, Kassling said.

One new user, Margaux McGrath (COL ’12), found out about CollegeCal on a Facebook advertisement.

“It’s user-friendly and a great way to keep busy people organized,” she said.

arc Sella (MSB ’12), who also uses the Web site, said that there are some disadvantages, specifically that teachers were not able to update syllabi and that not many people he knew had joined the site.

“The first week, it was just really nice to flip to that site and see my schedule,” he said. “As more people start to use it, it will improve – it’s just a matter of getting the word out.”

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