Curricle

Curricle aims at developing a lively, interactive, playful mode of navigating curricular programming and choices not as a catalogue but as a landscape of intersecting paths; not as an inventory of single items grouped into disciplinary pages and lists, but instead as a unified whole, a dense fabric woven together out of interdisciplinary connections.

The core of the project will take the form of a comprehensive experiment employing course-listing data from the Harvard Registrar’s office and Harvard Archive. These data will produce aggregate visualizations that reveal clusters, connections, cross-disciplinary themes and threads. The aim will be to establish what sorts of approaches yield the most interesting new ways to see, experience, and explore the curriculum with an eye to developing a platform that would leverage the power of curricular data to tell stories that help to orient, guide, and shape student choices in richer, more interactive and imaginative ways.

Potential summer projects:

• Develop schema to integrate archival and current data
• Develop interactive visualizations of curricula and their connections
• Explore approaches to recommending next courses in a sequence (e.g. based on past choices, interests, etc)

Technologies involved:

• Javascript / HTML / CSS
• Open to developers working with their preferred technologies as long as process and findings are well-documented

Requirements:

• Experience with data visualization

Mentor: Jessica Yurkofsky (jessica@metalab.harvard.edu)