Hack Week nurtures innovators
While many students were savoring the dwindling days of relaxation before the spring semester’s grind, Harvard freshmen Josh Palay and Andrew Mauboussin were back on campus last week, already putting in long hours of work. The two were designing a new, unofficial, online interface for Harvard’s Q Guide, the website where students can find evaluations of Harvard courses written by past students in the class. While the site is a good resource for students considering taking a course, it contains data that’s not easily accessible, such as a comparison of course evaluations over several years, according to Palay. Palay and Mauboussin want to put that information at students’ fingertips. “I felt kind of frustrated with the original interface,” Palay said. “We’re making it easier to find courses, nicer to look at. We’ve added charts to view [instructional] trends.” Palay and Mauboussin formed one of 17 student teams participating in Hack Week, an intense,...