Amid the furious clicking of laptop keys, some students in Information Sciences and Technology are working to bring America Online (AOL) back in style.
About 80 students in professor Bernard "Jim" Jansen's Information Sciences and Technology 440W (IST Integration) classes are currently working to create a localized search engine for AOL that appeals to a younger audience. The students are divided into teams of four or five, with each team working independently on the problem.
Matt Bretan (senior-information sciences and technology) said he is not a team leader, but said his experience in IST Integration has helped him to find a median between the project's design and its real world consequences.
"The designers just want to go off and create something without thinking about its implications, and the legal people are only thinking about things like violating copyrights" he said. "I'm working to finding a median between the two."
Mark Connolly (senior-information sciences and technology) said his team is working to build the search engine from AOL's current ownership of MapQuest.
"If we could combine the MapQuest technology with a search engine, we would be able to show the location of a place that people are searching for," he said.
Connolly added that the hardest part of the process has been trying to get information, such as software costs, from companies who do not want to release the information.
"We have sometimes had to use estimates because we can't get the actual information, but we are slowly making progress," he said.
Jansen said the project is designed to boost AOL's performance among college students.
"In the past, AOL has not done well at the college level," he said. "They are looking for our help to create a system that will be easily accessible to students looking for services in their area."
In addition to Jansen's search engine project, about 40 students in IST professor John Harwood's section of IST 440w are working to make AOL's Internet service and web browser more appealing to college students.
"AOL has lost a lot of business in the past few years to high speed Internet companies such as Comcast and Adelphia," he said.
"My students are working on a browser that would get young people to subscribe to AOL and hopefully stick with them in the future," Hardwood added.
Carmel Hazard, associate director of AOL university relations, said the projects are part of AOL's "partnership in excellence" program, which currently takes place in about 25 universities around the country, with each tackling a different problem within the company.
"College students are the first generation of students who have grown up with computers," he said. "We are finding that they have a fresh set of ideas and a different perspective to bring to the table."
Jansen said the students are not being paid for the services because they are not AOL employees, and also because of the risk associated with using student ideas.
"AOL may get good ideas from our students, but at the same time they may not get anything at all," he said. "If a team's idea is used by the company, they will have the compensation of being able to put that credential on their resumes."
Jansen said that at the end of April three teams will travel to AOL headquarters in Dulles, Va., to present their ideas to the company's marketing representatives.
Harwood said that an intense amount of competition exists between the students in the class, and he tries to grade them as fairly as possible, given the fact that there is no set solution to the problem.
Bretan said the class's grading seems fair, although the solution to the problem is not clear.
"The entire field of IST is not cut and dry," he said.
"We are used to working on problems where the answers are not readily available and being graded on our ability to come up with a solution," Bretan added.
