Oycas is a social-networking tool for the students and teachers in Universities and Colleges. This project started with a vision to combine the effectiveness of online collaboration tools with collaborative nature of the social networks.

The goal behind Oycas Social Network was to allow the instructors and the students to interact online as they normally would in the classroom. At time of the development oycas, there were some online learning platforms like WebCT or Blackboard which provided some level of interaction between the students and the instructors however this interaction was a one-way street with the instrucors dictating and the students following. 

Oycas was meant to empower the students by spreading the control of information between the students and the instructors equally.This meant the no longer the instructors can force their way onto the students and the students had access to other students and instructors. 

Moreover to simulate a more social environment,  Oycas provided tools like photo sharing, classifield listings, note sharing and discussion forums to both the students and the instructors.

Oycas Social Network was developed using the Runy on Rails framework. It also inspired developing a similar project Classtalk which is a Facebook application.

If you want more information regarding this project you can view the demo at http://oycas.peerglobe.com