CourseKnight

Inspiration

During the opening ceremony, it occurred to one of our group members just how far Discord as a platform has come. The platform has spread so far beyond the scope of gaming and has found itself in just the perfect space for students and educators to come together and connect around the globe.

But, most mysteriously, it has all of the capability to interact with APIs and webhooking, yet no such solution exists for integrating canvas into the student created Discord spaces.

What it does

CourseKnight operates on both a guild and personal level.

When it comes to guilds, CourseKnight has the ability to focus on updating content for any number of courses. Whether a guild decides to be dedicated to a single topic or focus on multiple (say for courses that have both the lecture and lab, 2 webcourses classes), it opens the user up to all of these without any hassle. Global posts for announcements, creating unique spaces for students to discuss various assignments, and live updating the reception among the class of said assignments. Students have it all in a manner that encourages community and organization.

When it comes to individual users, simply linking your own canvas account to the bot opens you up to live account updates. Whether this be impending assignment due dates or grade changes, CourseKnight will automatically, within the minute of change, inform you directly about status changes. Beating out the slow clunky nature of mobile notifications by miles, while being convenient and easy to access.

Embeds provide direct access to the class or assignment referenced, saving students the hassle of manually navigating to the item in question.

How we built it

CourseKnight is built utilizing Python, discord.py, the Canvas API, and Google Gemini. Google Gemini plays an important role within the bot, providing on-the-fly unique dialogue and interactivity when it comes to engaging with coursework. One such feature is assignment summaries, wherein Google Gemini is employed to be an encouraging and helpful asset in giving students the morale and information needed to tackle assignments.