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Hi Kevin, 

I’ve attached my answers to your questions in this email. 

However, to start, I want to mention that I am no longer working on Coursicle full-time. I’ve transitioned to more of an advisory role at this point. Also, please let me know if you have any follow up questions for me -- happy to answer those as well. 

1. What is your biggest goal at this moment?
	•	Coursicle’s biggest goal right now is to expand to as many schools as possible. With the shut down of MyEdu and with Scheedule losing its class schedule planning functionality, we know there are a lot of students who could really use Coursicle to help with the course registration process. 
2. What inspired your idea for this app?
	•	The inspiration for Coursicle was actually the terrible registration experience that my co-founder had as a freshman at UNC. He spent hours trying to use the university software to plan his schedule and once he tried to get into his classes, he was blocked from many of them due to overenrollment. We realized that this was a problem that not only Joe, but many other students at UNC and even students at other universities were facing. 
3. Why should students download the app?
	•	Students should download the app because it gives them a better shot at getting into classes that fill up quickly. This makes the app particularly useful for students who need to get into certain classes in order to graduate on-time or students who want to take certain sections of a class (such as those that don’t start at 8AM).
4. What features does the app/website provide?
	•	The website allows students to easily browse classes and create as many potential schedules as they’d like. The app allows students to recieve notifications as soon as a class they want to take has an available seat. 
5. Why did you create the app for android while Joe created the app for iOS?
	•	I had experience with building Android apps from some volunteer work I did in college. Joe had experience with iOS development from some side projects he did in college. Thus, we thought it would be natural for us to split up the app development in this way. 







































Hi Andrew, 

Absolutely! 

Awesome. I've attached our answers to your questions below. Like last time, we've attributed the quotes to each individual. I’ve also included a Dropbox link with screenshots of the app.

Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w06uruoresrag3k/AABb66b7uGHGeHogp_sbP9bVa?dl=0

	•	(To repeat from the last article) What really is Coursicle, and why should students use it?
	◦	Joe: Coursicle is a service that helps college students plan and get into their ideal class schedule. Students can receive notifications when seats open up in a class via our Android or iOS app (https://www.coursicle.com/app/), and they can browse classes and plan their schedule using the website (https://www.coursicle.com/nd/).
	◦	Tara: Big picture, Coursicle seeks to relieve some of the intense stress associated with registering for classes. Specifically, our website helps students prepare multiple schedules prior to registration — which can be tedious to do manually — while our app can help them get into the classes in their ideal schedule.
	•	How long has Coursicle been open to ND students?
	◦	Tara: Notre Dame was the very first school we expanded to after running at UNC exclusively for 3 years. The first semester we supported for Notre Dame was Spring 2016. 
	•	What is the new Coursicle app?
	◦	Joe: The Coursicle app is a replacement for our text/email feature which notified students when a class they wanted had an open seat. Now, students can download the app and receive push notifications when a seat opens up in a class. 
	◦	Joe: We had a lot of new users last semester, and we were sending so many texts (~200,000/month) that Verizon started blocking some of our notifications and some Sprint users never received any of our notifications. By building the app, we could get around all of these issues and be sure that students would get all of their notifications. Moreover, the notifications we send via the app are delivered to students’ phones faster than our texts were. 
	◦	Tara: In addition to guaranteed delivery of notifications, the app also prevents our users’ text messages or email inboxes from being clogged up with Coursicle notifications, which we received a few complaints about in the past.
	•	Does it do anything that the Coursicle website does not? 
	◦	Tara: Right now, the app primarily acts as a replacement for the old texting notification service, as well as being a companion to the website  (https://www.coursicle.com/nd/). Something new is that you can use the app to quickly check whether a class is open, closed, or waitlist, simply by tracking the class (we don’t display this information on the website). 
	•	Is it free or paid?
	◦	Joe: Students can download the app and track one class at a time for free. If they want to track multiple classes at the same time, they can pay $2.99 to track unlimited classes for a given semester. As a small company (two people), we tried to keep the service completely free for as long as possible, but unfortunately, it came to the point where we were going to have to start charging or shut down the notification service. 
	•	Why was the app released?
	◦	Tara: The main reason we switched from a texting service to an app was because we needed a way of delivering a high volume of notifications without some of them getting blocked by major carriers like Verizon. 
	•	Plans for future expansion/features (both for Coursicle in general and for the app specifically)?
	◦	Joe: We now support over 350 colleges (up from 200 last semester), and we’re looking to expand to even more in the coming months. In fact, just this weekend, we added support for Saint Mary’s College. In terms of the app, we’re looking into adding more information about each class being tracked (such as the professor, the days/time, etc). As for the website, we’re planning to add the ability to save classes directly from the schedule view, something a lot of users have written in to request this semester.
	•	Is there any addition info that you'd like to provide for the article?
	◦	Joe: More than 980 Notre Dame students used our notification feature last semester, which was the first semester the service was offered at Notre Dame. 

Founders: 
	•	Tara Aida
	◦	Graduated from Harvard University in May 2016 (A.B. Math and Physics) 
	•	Joe Puccio
	◦	Graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2016 (B.S. Math and Computer Science)



Joe Puccio
Co-founder, Coursicle
joe@coursicle.com











He said: “

Good Evening,
Sorry I thought I sent it to you earlier. My apologies 
Attached are some of the questions that I drafted. 
Let me know if you have any comments

Screenshots, pictures of the founders, etc would be appreciated. Also please include attributions for the photos as well.”



Hi Tarlon, 

No problem at all! 

I've provided answers to your questions below. I've also included a Dropbox link with screenshots of Coursicle and photos of us. Please let me know if anything else could help.

Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eerxc5t3g5hgjep/AAB2FZ_IumeJFbTyRM5Te8-6a?dl=0

Photo attributions: all app screenshots should be attributed to Coursicle, and each of us may be attributed for the respective photos of ourselves. 

	•	Founder Question: Who are the brains behind the app(brief intro with name, fun fact, background, etc)? 
	◦	We’re a team of two, Tara Aida and Joe Puccio. Tara studied Math and Physics at Harvard, and Joe studied Math and Computer Science at UNC. We both have been working on Coursicle full-time since graduating this past May. Both of us work on all aspects of Coursicle (developing the website, marketing, the business side, etc.). Over the summers in college, Joe interned at a couple software companies, and Tara worked on applied math and physics research. We actually have the same fun fact: we both type in an alternate keyboard layout called Dvorak.
	•	Company Questions
	◦	How large is the company? 
	▪	Just two people (the co-founders, Tara and Joe).
	◦	How many employees do you have? 
	▪	No employees. 
	◦	Are you currently accepting interns? 
	▪	While we're not actively hiring right now, we're always interested in working with motivated people. We have a couple projects in mind that we’d love an intern’s help with.
	•	Idea Questions 
	◦	How did the idea originate? 
	▪	When I (Joe) was an incoming first-year at UNC, I spent several hours trying to plan my class schedule, but when I finally went to register for my classes, I got into only one of the five I needed to take. That night, I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat. One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and by the end of the registration period, about 900 students had signed-up. The next semester, 1800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth. A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule. Part of the reason this task is so difficult is because the software the university provides to search for classes is often outdated and tedious to use. Coursicle really came out of a pain that we--as well as our friends--were experiencing as students. Due to increased demand for our text service last semester (we started sending so many texts that Verizon started blocking us), we had to switch over to an iOS and Android app to send notifications. 
	◦	What was the purpose behind Coursicle? 
	▪	We really wanted to reduce the stress and tedium around the entire registration process. In terms of pre-registration, we set out to create an intuitive, simple course search with built-in schedule planning, so students wouldn’t have to plan our their schedule by hand or in Excel. In terms of post-registration, we wanted to provide students with a notification service (now as an app) that could concretely help them get into full classes. 
	◦	How many schools is it available to? 
	▪	Right now, the Coursicle schedule planner is available at over 200 colleges and the app is available at over 100 colleges. 
	•	App Questions:
	◦	What’s the signup process like?
	▪	Very easy: there is no sign-up! You download the app, select your college, and you immediately can start tracking classes. We wanted to make it as simple as possible to get started. You don’t have to create an account or enter in your email, ever.
	◦	Who can sign up? 
	▪	Anybody can download the app and start using it immediately.
	◦	Is it free? 
	▪	The app is free to download, and students can track one class at a time for free. If students want to track more than one class at a time, they can pay $2.99 to track unlimited classes in a given semester. 
	◦	Okay I signed up. What do I do next?
	▪	Once you have selected your college, simply tap the “plus” button, search for a class you want to get into, tap it, and from then on you’ll get notifications when the status of the class changes (e.g. from “Closed” to “Open” or “Closed” to “Waitlist”).

Best,
Joe










------------end of what tara needs to review----------


Hi Jordan, 

No problem at all! 

I've provided answers to your questions below. I've also included a Dropbox link with screenshots of Coursicle. Please let me know if anything else could help.

Dropbox link: [insert link]

	•	What is your and Tara's background, such as where you grew up, what colleges you went to, and so on?
	◦	Tara studied Math and Physics at Harvard, and I studied Math and Computer Science at UNC. We both grew up in North Carolina (Tara’s from Morrisville, and I’m from Chapel Hill). Over the summers in college, I interned at a couple software companies, and Tara worked on applied math and physics research.
	•	What brought about the creation of your website?
	◦	When I was an incoming first-year at UNC, I spent several hours trying to plan my class schedule, but when I finally went to register for my classes, I got into only one of the five I needed to take. That night, I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat. One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and by the end of the registration period, about 900 students had signed-up. The next semester, 1800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth. A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule. Part of the reason this task is so arduous is because the software the university provides to search for classes is usually outdated and tedious to use. Coursicle really came out of a pain that we--as well as our friends--were experiencing as students. Due to increased demand for our text service last semester (we started sending so many texts that Verizon started blocking us), we had to switch over to an iOS and Android app to send  notifications. 
	•	What was your goal with the website? Have you succeeded?
	◦	We really wanted to reduce the stress and tedium around the registration process. Specifically, we set out to create an intuitive, simple course search with built-in schedule planning, so students wouldn’t have to plan our their schedule by hand or in Excel. An important secondary goal was to create a product that people would truly enjoy using. I think we’ve succeeded in reducing some of the stress and a lot of the tedium, but of course we still have many more schools to add support for.	
	•	What inspired Coursicle?
	◦	I think I’ve answered this in “What brought about the creation of your website?”
	•	Has Coursicle lived up to your expectations?
	◦	Yes, in fact, it’s exceeded them in a lot of ways. We’re amazed by how ingrained Coursicle has become at some of our first universities, like UNC where over 80% of students use it every semester. We’re also very touched whenever students write in to let us know how much the app or website has helped with their registration experience. 
	•	Why did you create it as an app? 
	◦	As the number of students using our text/email service grew, we started hitting limits on how many texts we could send. When Verizon started blocking some of our texts due to the high volume, we knew we had to find another way to notify students. By sending push notifications to users via the app, we’ve completely gotten around these limits.
	•	How will this be helpful to universities? 
	◦	At various schools we support, it’s not uncommon for academic advisors or even professors to write in, thanking us for creating Coursicle. Advisors understand the pain of registration--both preparing for registration as well as trying to get into classes during the add/drop period. When a student who needs to get into a full course to graduate comes to them for help, there often isn’t much they can do. The app gives advisors an extra tool they can use to help students. 
	•	How will this be helpful for students?
	◦	Coursicle removes a lot of the tedium from schedule planning, because it prevents students from having to manually draw their schedule out by hand or in an Excel document. The app also gives students a better shot at getting into classes that fill up quickly, without having to refresh a webpage constantly over the course of months. 
	•	Is the app free?
	◦	The app is free to download, and students can track one class at a time for free. If students want to track more than one class at a time, they can pay $2.99 to track unlimited classes in a given semester. 
	•	Have you run into any troubles with the app? 
	◦	So far, no troubles at all. It’s been a lot easier to manage compared to the text/email notification service, since we don’t have to worry about notifications not getting delivered anymore. 
	•	What are your plans for the future?
	◦	Our immediate plans are to expand Coursicle to even more schools. Right now, we have over 500 requests from students asking us to expand to their school. After that, we’ll be reviewing the feedback we received from this semester to improve our products. 


























Hi Andrew, 

I’ve attached Tara and my answers to your questions, and I’ve provided a short blurb, some background on us, and some screenshots of Coursicle. Please let me know if anything else would be helpful.

	•	Why did you create Coursicle and how did the idea come about?
	◦	Joe: When I was an incoming first-year at UNC, I spent several hours trying to plan out my class schedule, and then when I finally went to register for my classes I got into only one of the five I needed to take. So that night, I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat. One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and at the end of the registration period about 900 students had signed-up. The next semester, 1800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth. A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule. Part of the reason this task is so arduous is because the software the university provides to search for classes is usually very outdated and tedious to use. So, Coursicle really came out of a pain that we as well as our friends were experiencing while we were students.
	•	What was your rationale for choosing the three schools (including Notre Dame) to launch Coursicle?
	◦	Tara: When we first started expanding, we wanted to launch at schools that were academically strong and had a mid-size to large undergraduate population. I also had a few high school friends who went to Notre Dame, and when I showed them Coursicle, they really liked it and said it would be useful. It was the same situation for Penn and Appalachian State. 
	•	What major changes have been made to Coursicle since its launch?
	◦	Tara: When we originally launched in 2013 at UNC, we actually only allowed students to browse for classes. After we started gaining popularity, it became clear that students wanted a schedule view where they could see the classes they were considering laid out. In the last year, we’ve also added the ability for students to login with Facebook to see what classes their friends are considering, and the ability to save multiple schedules. All of these features have been in response to user requests, which we typically use to guide our development. 
	•	What plans do you have for Coursicle?
	◦	Joe: We have a lot planned for improving our existing services, especially our schedule planner. One thing we’ve been playing around with is the idea of connecting students who are in the same class by allowing them to chat, create collaborative study guides, etc. We’re also considering building out a feature that recommends classes you might be interested in, based on what you’ve already taken. 
	•	Why is Coursicle useful to students?
	◦	Joe: Coursicle is useful because it helps college students plan and get into their perfect class schedules. By doing so, Coursicle helps relieve some of the stress and tedium involved with the course registration process. This is important because registration can be extremely stressful and has rather important consequences. 
	•	Is there anything else you would like Notre Dame students to know about Coursicle?
	◦	Tara: While Coursicle has been at Notre Dame for a year, we very recently launched Coursicle Notify at Notre Dame. Coursicle Notify texts students when a class they want has an open seat. 

Blurb: Coursicle allows college students to easily browse classes, plan their class schedule, and sign up to receive text notifications as soon as a class they need to take has an available seat. It is the first cross-college service that improves the course registration process from start to finish. 

Founders: 
	•	Tara Aida
	◦	Graduated from Harvard University in May 2016 (A.B. Math and Physics) 
	•	Joe Puccio
	◦	Graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2016 (B.S. Math and Computer Science)











Hi Lydia, 

I’ve attached Tara and my answers to your questions and some screenshots of Coursicle. Please let me know if anything else would be helpful!

	•	What exactly is Coursicle?
	◦	Coursicle is an online service that allows college students to easily browse classes, plan their class schedule, and receive text notifications as soon as a class they need to take has an available seat.
	•	Why did you create Coursicle?
	◦	When I (Joe) was an incoming first-year at UNC, I spent several hours trying to plan out my class schedule, and then when I finally went to register for my classes I got into only one of the five I needed to take. So, that night I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat. One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and at the end of the registration period about 900 students had signed-up. The next semester, 1800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth. A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule. Part of the reason this task is so arduous is because the software the university provides to search for classes is usually very outdated and tedious to use. So, Coursicle really came out of a pain that we as well as our friends were experiencing while we were students.
	•	Was this just a test run or is it here at St. Thomas for good?
	◦	We plan to support St. Thomas indefinitely.
	•	What were the hopes in creating Coursicle?
	◦	We really wanted to reduce the stress and tedium around the registration process. Specifically, we set out to create an intuitive course search with built-in schedule planning, so students wouldn’t have to plan our their schedule by hand or in Excel. An important secondary goal was to create a product that people would fall in love with. 
	•	So far have you received a positive feedback from students?
	◦	Yes, the feedback has been remarkably positive. We get emails from students every week thanking us for helping them get into a class they needed to take to graduate, or for making the registration process a lot less stressful for them. Also, in just the last month we’ve received over 150 requests from students asking that we add support for their college. 
	•	Would you say it is popular among students?
	◦	Depending on the school, yes. At a few schools where we’ve been launched at for more than a year (e.g. UNC, Notre Dame, Appalachian State, etc.), a significant fraction of the student population uses Coursicle. For instance, at UNC more than 80% of students use Coursicle. For the majority of our other schools, we’re really just starting out. However, in the past few months, students at those schools have been signing up at a much faster rate than we’ve seen in the past, so we’re gaining momentum. 
	•	What is your favorite part of Coursicle?
	◦	Our favorite part of Coursicle is the design of the search results. We’ve assigned an image to represent each subject, and display that image on the front of every class “card”. The images make browsing for courses a bit more pleasant than just looking at row after row of text, and act as a visual aid in grouping search results by subject.





Hi Mary, 

I’ve attached Tara and my answers to your questions and some screenshots of Coursicle. Please let me know if anything else would be helpful!

	•	What school do you attend and what is your year and major?
	◦	Tara Aida - Co-founder
	▪	Graduated from Harvard University in May 2016 (A.B Math and Physics) 
	◦	Joe Puccio - Co-founder
	▪	Graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2016 (B.S. Math and Computer Science)
	•	What inspired you to start the site?
	◦	When I (Joe) was an incoming first-year at UNC, I spent several hours trying to plan out my class schedule, and then when I finally went to register for my classes I got into only one of the five I needed to take. So, that night I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat. One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and at the end of the registration period about 900 students had signed-up. The next semester, 1800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth. A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule. Part of the reason this task is so arduous is because the software the university provides to search for classes is usually very outdated and tedious to use. So, Coursicle really came out of a pain that we as well as our friends were experiencing while we were students.
	•	When did the project start? How much time did it take to create?
	◦	We launched our notification feature in November of 2012, and our schedule planning feature in July of 2013. We decided to expand Coursicle beyond just UNC last Fall. It took about 3 months to create the original site. Since then, we’ve dedicated hundreds of hours to improving the site as well as expanding to more colleges.
	•	What was the biggest challenge in developing the site?
	◦	When we started working on our schedule planner, we needed to find a listing of all the courses at UNC so we could populate our database of courses. The only source we knew of was a PDF that was updated every week. It took us about 2 months just to figure out how to reliably extract all the course information from that PDF.   
	•	What's your favorite part of the site and why?
	◦	Our favorite part of Coursicle is the design of the search results. We’ve assigned an image to represent each subject, and display that image on the front of every class “card”. The images make browsing for courses a bit more pleasant than just looking at row after row of text, and act as a visual aid in grouping search results by subject.
	•	What made you want to bring the site to USC?
	◦	We saw The Daily Gamecock’s article about MyEdu dropping support for USC, and how students were upset and wanted an alternative to help them plan their schedule. 
	•	How did you go about bringing the site to USC?
	◦	We found the public listing of all USC courses, and then wrote a script that keeps our course listing in sync with the public listing. 
	•	What sort of traffic do you get on the site, both in general and for USC courses?
	◦	We get several thousand hits a day from the colleges we support across the country. We’ve had a bit over 500 hits on the USC site.
	•	How many schools does the site service?
	◦	We support a little over 200 colleges and universities. 
	•	What are your plans for the future of the project?
	◦	We have a lot planned for improving our existing services, especially our schedule planner, but we’ve also been playing around with the idea of connecting students who are in the same class by allowing them to chat, create collaborative study guides, etc.
	•	Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the project?
	◦	One cool thing that we added to Coursicle relatively recently is the ability to login with Facebook and see all the classes your friends have taken and are considering taking for the upcoming semester. 




























Hi Katya, 

I’ve attached Tara and my answers to your questions and I’ve provided a short blurb, some background on us, and some screenshots of Coursicle. Please let me know if anything else would be helpful!

	•	What is coursicle? What is its history? 
	◦	Coursicle allows college students to easily browse classes, plan their class schedule, and receive text notifications as soon as a class they need to take has an available seat. We started at UNC Chapel Hill in 2013 and now more than 80% of UNC students use Coursicle. Last year, we decided to expand beyond UNC to help more students. Currently, we support more than 200 colleges and universities. 
	•	Who are you guys? What are your backgrounds, experiences and interests?
	◦	We’re a team of two, Tara Aida and Joe Puccio. Tara studied Math and Physics at Harvard, and Joe studied Math and Computer Science at UNC. We both have been working on Coursicle full-time since graduating this past May. Both of us work on all aspects of Coursicle (developing the website, marketing, the business side, etc.). Over the summers in college, Joe interned at a couple software companies, and Tara did math and physics research at a few universities. We both love to create products that people fall in love with.
	•	Why did you create coursicle?
	◦	When I (Joe) was an incoming first-year at UNC, I spent several hours trying to plan out my class schedule, and then when I finally went to register for my classes I got into only one of the five I needed to take. So, that night I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat. One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and at the end of the registration period about 900 students had signed-up. The next semester, 1800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth. A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule. Part of the reason this task is so arduous is because the software the university provides to search for classes is usually very outdated and tedious to use. So, Coursicle really came out of a pain that we as well as our friends were experiencing while we were students.
	•	What makes coursicle different from other scheduling tools? Why should GMU students use coursicle over another similar service?
	◦	One key difference is that, unlike most scheduling tools, Coursicle allows students to sign-up to receive a text message when a class they want to take has an available seat. Another difference is that we’re actively developing Coursicle and adding features that students request; the majority of services out there haven’t been updated in years, and many are hard to use and don’t offer a good way of browsing classes (they all assume you know which classes you want to take, and just want to see the possible combinations). 

One thing we want to mention, which we think might be relevant to your readers is the shut down of MyEdu: 
	•	A service similar to Coursicle that was being actively maintained was called “MyEdu”. MyEdu supported over 800 colleges and universities (including GMU) and was used by millions of students. However, Blackboard acquired MyEdu in 2014 and shut them down two months ago. Since then, we’ve really been trying to fill the gap MyEdu has left. In just the last month, we’ve received hundreds of requests from students asking that we add support for their college. 





Hi Emily,

I’ve attached Tara and my answers to your questions and some screenshots of Coursicle. Please let me know if anything else would be helpful!

	•	What is your name(s) and position(s)?
	◦	Tara Aida - Co-founder
	▪	Graduated from Harvard University in May 2016 (A.B Math and Physics) 
	◦	Joe Puccio - Co-founder
	▪	Graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2016 (B.S. Math and Computer Science)
	•	What is Coursicle and how was it created?
	◦	Coursicle allows college students to easily browse classes, plan their class schedule, and receive text notifications as soon as a class they need to take has an available seat. The site grew out of frustrating course registration experiences that we had while we were students. When Joe was an incoming first-year at UNC, he spent hours trying to plan a class schedule and when he finally went to register, he only got into one out of the five classes he needed to take. That night, he wrote a program that would text him when one of the classes he wanted had an available seat. We opened that program up to other students at UNC, and it grew by word of mouth from there (900 users first semester, 1800 second semester, etc.) 
	•	Is there a Coursicle app in the process?
	◦	We don’t have an app in the works right now, but it’s something we’re considering for the near future.
	•	How does the website work?
	◦	Students can go to https://www.coursicle.com/wcu/ and use the search fields on the left-hand side of the page to filter down classes by subject, title, days, time and more. When they find a class they’re interested in, they can click on the star in the upper right-hand corner of the class to add it to one of their saved schedules. They can navigate to the calendar view at any time to see what their weekly schedule would look like, and narrow in on a final schedule by removing classes that conflict. If there’s a class that’s closed that they want to get into, they can go to https://www.coursicle.com/notify/ to sign up to recieve a text message when the class has an open seat.
	•	Is registration to the website free?
	◦	Yes, Coursicle is entirely free. Students don’t even need to create an account to search for classes and plan their schedule!
	•	How is it beneficial to students?
	◦	Coursicle removes a lot of the tedium from schedule planning, because it prevents students from manually having to draw their schedule out by hand, or fill in an Excel document. Coursicle’s notification system also gives students a shot at getting into classes that fill up quickly.
	•	Regarding registration, is it synced with the courses at Western Carolina?
	◦	Yes, we’ve written a script to keep the list of classes we display on Coursicle in sync with the classes offered at Western Carolina. 
	•	Can you create your schedule for the upcoming semester through Coursicle?
	◦	Yes, you can plan your Spring 2017 schedule on Coursicle. You can also save your current Fall 2016 schedule and your schedule from older semesters, if you’d like to have them saved somewhere you can access easily.
	•	Can it be used in place of myWCU?
	◦	You still have to use myWCU to actually register for your classes, but you can use Coursicle to replace pretty much every other aspect of course registration.
	•	Is there anything else you would like the student body to know about Coursicle?
	◦	One cool thing that we added to Coursicle relatively recently is the ability to login with Facebook and see all the classes your friends have taken and are considering taking for the upcoming semester. 



























Hey Sarah, 

Thanks for your call/email. I’ve attached Tara and my answers to your questions, and I’ve provided a short blurb, some background on us, and some screenshots of Coursicle. Please let me know if anything else would be helpful.

	•	Why is this website important? 
	◦	Coursicle is important because it helps college students plan and get into their perfect class schedules. By doing so, Coursicle helps relieve some of the stress and tedium involved with the course registration process, which is important because registration can be extremely stressful, and can have rather important consequences. 
	•	How did you come up with the concept? 
	◦	When I (Joe) was an incoming first-year at UNC, I spent several hours trying to plan out my class schedule, and then when I finally went to register for my classes I got into only one of the five I needed to take. So, that night I started working on a program that would text me when a class I wanted had an available seat. One of my friends suggested opening it up to other students, and at the end of the registration period about 900 students had signed-up. The next semester, 1800 students had signed up, and it just kept growing by word of mouth. A few months later, Tara suggested we try to solve the other side of registration: the arduous process of figuring out what classes to take and trying to fit them all into a non-overlapping schedule. So, Coursicle really came out of a pain that we were experiencing while we were students.
	•	Any advice you have for students who get stressed when a class is closed?, etc. 
	◦	We really can relate, because class registration stressed both of us out a lot, and it’s a lot of the reason why we created Coursicle. Before registration, we think the best thing to do is be prepared with an ideal schedule and multiple backup schedules, each assuming that certain classes close. Then, if classes in your ideal schedule start to close, revert to one of your backup plans. This approach works well with Coursicle, where you can save as many different schedules as you want and switch between them easily. Then, if you need to get into one of the closed classes in your ideal schedule, you can use Coursicle Notify to get a text when the class opens up. 


Blurb: Coursicle allows college students to easily browse classes, plan their class schedule, and sign up to receive text notifications as soon as a class they need to take has an available seat. It is the first cross-college service that improves the course registration process from start to finish. 

Founders: 
	•	Tara Aida
	◦	Graduated from Harvard University in May 2016 (A.B Math and Physics) 
	•	Joe Puccio
	◦	Graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2016 (B.S. Math and Computer Science)