ICE course planner likely to be phased out after the spring

The Integrated Course Engine, the popular course planning TigerApp, will likely operate for one more semester before being superseded by Course Planner, the University-sanctioned course planning feature in the new student portal TigerHub.

At last Sunday's weekly senate meeting, the Undergraduate Student Government discussed plans and negotiations to retain the TigerApp feature for spring course offerings.

According to information technology chair Clement Lee ’17, he received confirmation that ICE will likely remain for spring 2015 before it will be officially retired by its original coder Gyeong-Sik Choi ’10.

Choi built the TigerApp for a project for COS 333: Advanced Programming Techniques.Choi could not be reached for comment.

“We’ve contacted him with regards to any updates,” Lee said. “The plan is to keep it alive for one more semester — for spring 2015 —and then to retire it.”

Lee said that students will likely receive a notification or redirect link on ICE reminding them of the transition to TigerHub.

He noted that ICE itself was created around 2008 and said he was surprised that the University previously had no formal official course-planning engine such as ICE before then.

“It’s time for the University to have its own version,” he said.

Features of Course Planner include the ability to search for courses and arrange them on a schedule, add extracurricular events to that calendar and easily view past course evaluations.

Despite the move to Course Planner, some students said they are going to miss ICE.

Bryan Ramirez ’18 said that ICE was very helpful to him compared to the original Student Course Online Registration Form andadded that one of the most useful features was being able to share and compare schedules with friends.

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“I feel that ICE — visually — was easy to follow and more appealing to looking at,” he said.

When asked about features unavailable on TigerHub’s Course Planner that were on ICE, Lee said that TigerHub may not have the schedule-sharing feature mainly due to security concerns.

“Students should see most of the features implemented,” he said. “There shouldn’t be anything dramatically missing.”

According to Lee, much of the feedback he has received regarding the transition from upperclassmen seems to be that many students are unaware that Course Planner will be replacing ICE.

“The intention is for TigerHub to replace ICE entirely,” Lee said. “It really should not fall on [the original coder] to keep updating.”

“It’ll get better and better with time,” he added.

TigerHub went live on Nov. 3and its Course Planner feature was available on Nov. 6 when spring course offerings were released.

Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the class year of Clement Lee. He is a member of the Class of 2017. The 'Prince' regrets the error.