College Direct

• 

  Calculus Three Course Page

• 

  Main Page

Inspiration

College is all about self-studying and developing our abilities to consume and synthesize new information. A recurring problem for all of us is that we can't find a resource until its too late and we are forced to drop the class or settle for a low grade. For this CUNY Hackathon our goal is to make a change not only for us but for all the students in the CUNY schools.

What it does

College Direct gives students easy access to supplemental materials for their specific course, at their school. Instead of having to spend time looking through multiple results from a Google search students can just find their school and course and find the best resources, as determined by their peers who took the course before.

On College Direct students can submit links to a useful resource by finding, rating, and provide a detailed review to describe the benefits.

How we built it

First, we laid out the sitemap, and the easiest way students would be able to find their course. We decided to build the website using HTML and CSS. We used GitHub to allow easier collaboration and to look at older versions.

Challenges we ran into

We had some issues with version management on GitHub, especially when we were trying to work on the same files concurrently. The serverside and backend stuff in general also gave us trouble. We originally planned on using a relational database to directly populate our pages but that was extremely hard to implement and to test. We heavily underestimated how complicated that would be. The last issue was making sure the external CSS file didn't conflict with the internal stylesheet.

Acomplishments We're Proud of

The biggest thing we're proud of is the Teamwork! It has been really exciting going from just four people walking into a Hackathon to a well-functioning team in just three days.

We're also proud of how the product turned out for having very limited web development experience. For only having three days and having to learn on the fly we're surprised about the variety of features and styling our website has.

What We Learned

Primarily we learned how to split responsibilities so we could work efficiently with the least amount of stress for each teammate. As such we learned to play to each other's strengths and to support each other.

On the technology side, we learned that there were easy ways to do almost everything we are attempting to do. From using Server APIs such as Loopback.io and Node.js instead of creating a database from scratch using SQL commands.

What's Next for College Direct

Moving forward it's developing the backend server side using Loopback.io and MongoDB. Once the backend is solid we'll develop a smart device app for ease of use. After that, it's all about adding more features and functionality to College Direct. We'll add the user ranking system, a user profile allowing quick access, and a syllabus following feature. The syllabus following feature would give you notifications and tailored responses depending on where you are in the semester based on the syllabus for your course.

Built With

• css
• github
• html5