Time capsule for CORS

Time capsule, time capsule, travelling through time

Time capsule, time capsule, keeping things of mine

Precious things we put away

Save them for another day

The day has come when I can say it's time capsule time

~ Time Capsule by Kellie from Hi-5, a popular children's show in the 2000s (view the clip)

Just like how the above lyrics from a children's show that was popular in the 2000s were preserved on YouTube, the internet can serve as a time capsule to record for posterity many other things that are fading into obscurity.

Things like CORS, which is entering its last year of operation.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, this post will give you some context.

The demise of CORS makes me a little sad, so I decided to make a time capsule for it in this post. I'll put some screenshots showing what the system looks like, along with captions explaining what each picture represents.

Because what goes on the internet stays on the internet, the memory of CORS will be immortalised by this series of images forever.

Who knows? Decades from now, a misty-eyed former NUS student might stumble across this post, and recall with great nostalgia how CORS made him feel, all those years ago.

Let's get into it.

This is the screen that greets us when we first log in.

This is the Module Management page. Under Allocated Modules, we can see what modules the university has pre-allocated to us in the coming semester. We can also select modules that we want to take by clicking the orange Add New Module button, and they will appear under Selected Modules.

After clicking the orange Add New Module button from the previous screenshot, we select our desired module from this list. The system is quite smart and if we fail to meet the prerequisites for a module or it has a clash in lecture or examination timing with another of our modules, we will be barred from adding it.

This screen tracks the number of bid points we have. We each have two accounts: the Programme account for buying modules within our faculty, and the General account for buying General Education modules and modules offered by other faculties. Each semester, we are credited 1000 points, split into 600 Programme points and 400 General points for FASS students. We can get bonus points by completing the student feedback exercise at the end of every semester. Points are debited out of the respective accounts when we place a bid for a module, and any refunds are credited back in afterwards. One point is also debited out for each pre-allocated module.

Where all the action happens! On this screen, we put in our bids by entering a whole number into the text field under the Your Bid column and clicking the orange Bid button. If the module is really popular, we watch anxiously as the next minimum bid, which is the amount we will have to pay if we want the module, steadily creeps upward as more and more people put in ever-increasing bids. The section called Modules Not Available for Bidding in Current Round is for advanced bidding on modules that will only be up for bidding in later rounds. We can put in bids in advance, and these bids will be automatically placed once the relevant round begins. This is great for people who are going on vacation and may not have access to the system when bidding is live.

After clicking the orange Bid button, the system prompts us to confirm our bid amount.

After confirming our bid amount in the previous screenshot, the system tells us that our bid has been successfully placed.

A few hours before the end of each round, bidding shifts to closed mode. Statistics showing the highest and lowest bids, and the next minimum bid, are no longer available. We can still place bids during this period, and people usually do to take advantage of the fact that no one can see the bid prices and react to any trends. This practice is sometimes known as sniping.

This is the appeal system. We can submit many different kinds of appeals for different purposes, but all of them must be supported by valid reasons written in a clear and coherent manner. A team of administrators manually reviews all appeals so frivolous appeals or those that are difficult to read will annoy them and they will not look favourably upon such appeals.

The website has an archive of statistics from previous bidding exercises. We use this to gauge the popularity of modules when deciding whether or not to bid for them, and for how much. In this example, from Round 1C of the AY2018/19 Semester 1 bidding exercise, we can see that Introduction to Psychology had two lecture timeslots up for bidding. The first one had 117 places available to students in their first or second semester, and 166 of them bid for it. In the end, it went for 300 points. The second lecture timeslot had 150 spots open for students in their first or second semester, and 215 of them vied for a place resulting in a final price of 201. The second lecture timeslot also had 3 bidders from outside FASS, and all of them got it for 1 point as the 12 vacancies for that student type was more than enough to accommodate them. Nobody from FASS who were not in their first or second semester bid for this module. From this information, if we were to be interested in buying this module in a future semester, we can conclude that psychology is a popular introductory module and we should be prepared to spend at least 200 points on it, unless we wait until we are no longer considered as New Students and will probably be able to secure the module for a much lower price.

This is an example of the so-called showhand syndrome, in which people bid disproportionately high amounts for a module that looks like it will go for a low price. In this case, there were 28 vacancies but fewer than 10 bidders, but I put in a huge bid of 1925 points which emptied my Programme account. There was no downside to this, as I would get all the excess points refunded to me at the end of the round. People who often showhand are colloquially referred to as whales, a term borrowed from gambling and gaming to label those who spend a lot of money.

After the end of the round, the system ranks all of the bidders in order of bid size, and the top X bidders get the module, where X represents the number of vacancies in that module. This table is then published on the website. My bid of 1925 points can be seen right at the top. It is lots of fun to showhand and this is one of the emotive aspects of the bidding system that I will sorely miss.

Another table on the website shows the aggregated results of the bidding round. My bid of 1925 points is reflected as the highest for the first timeslot, which was priced at 1 point in the end. I got my refund of 1924 points shortly after.

That's it. CORS has one more exercise left, over the New Year period between 2018 and 2019... Then it's goodbye forever, with only screenshots like the ones in this post to remind us of what was almost a quintessential part of life as a millennial-generation NUS student.