Choosing Courses
Each year, Brown offers approximately 2000 courses in forty different departments. Students are encouraged to build meaningful academic programs among several departments according to their developing interests. Many students pursue interdisciplinary courses of study that tap into Brown’s strengths in cross-disciplinary teaching and research. Other students invent their own independent courses of study, either individually or in groups. Choosing courses in this context may be daunting, but it is also exhilarating.
The University has three different online tools that help students navigate Brown’s extensive course offerings. Banner, Brown’s official online course catalogue, contains a full catalog of all courses at Brown as well as complete class schedule information by semester. “Mocha” was created by Brown students to assist in planning course schedules. Students use “Mocha” to manage their course schedules, especially while schedules are in flux during shopping period.
The third and newest tool that we offer is CourseMap, which allows students and faculty to search for courses by instructor, topic, or key word, as well as by department and course name and number. Designed by Dan Rosenberg ‘09, CourseMap links courses, topics, and instructors through dynamic, web-like graphical configurations that shift through “informotions,” which are modeled on physical properties such as magnetism, elasticity, and viscosity. We invite students to use this new tool through shopping period and after, alone or together with academic advisors, friends, and classmates.
CourseMap is a pilot program sponsored by the Dean of the College Office. We welcome your questions, comments, and suggestions on how we can refine CourseMap to better suit student needs. Click Advising@Brown.edu to give us your feedback.
To access CourseMap off-campus, connect to the Brown network with the VPN client (available at software.brown.edu).
