CUNY-CollAPP

Highlighting the U in the University

Inspiration:

We were just throwing a bunch of trash ideas around, not knowing what we actually want to build. Some of the ideas were to build a game which solves no existing problem, one was to build an app that allows you to take pictures of your face that will then make you look bold and you could try out different haircuts. One of our teammates came up with a brilliant idea about socializing CUNY students. We then started to think how we could socialize CUNY students and if it is possible to do that. CUNY yet has no system of letting students from different colleges socialize with each other. Blackboard only allows you to email students in your class, which is not convenient as Blackboard does not notify you of an email unless you're logged in. This way CUNY students as a whole can feel connected and improve the community between colleges to make us our own powerhouse.

What it Does?

The application takes the metadata of a student based on their major, personal interests, and lifestyle, and allows students from different CUNY colleges to socialize. Chatrooms are created automatically based on what class the student is taking. Suppose a student missed classes in the beginning of the semester and cannot attend class due to personal reasons, s/he cannot get the notes. By the use of the chatrooms this platform creates, the student can ask for the notes in the course chat or can get the notes from another student who took the course already with the same professor. The app also allows all the students to join a general chatroom where they can chat about their courses in different colleges.

How we built it?

We build a prototype of this project using WordPress and various plugins that we modified in PHP, CSS to get a working website up and running. Initially we developed the website in a local machine, but due to network constraints we had to move our website to a external Ubuntu server, in which we actually set up available through the internet by configuring LAMP on Ubuntu, setting a Domain, configuring firewall and network settings. This was a huge advantage because now all our team members were able to continue working on the web platform remote from home, through SFTP. We also created a demo for our mobile iOS app using XCode.

Challenges we ran into:

We had little to no experience in PHP and HTML. In the process of making our app, we created a local server which we found out was not convenient. Our local server crashed a couple of times before we decided to move it to an actual server. We all crashed our local server at least once. Moving to an actual external server cost us a lot of time. We had to reconfigure most of the plugins. One of our teammates' laptop died on the second day and had to configure his proxy, ipv4, and ipv6 settings. We had to figure out how to add different chat boxes in the website as by adding a chat box our website kept crashing.

Accomplishments we are proud of:

We learned some skills in how to code in html and CSS for web design (menus, posts, pages, etc.). We learned basic app making skills so we could make a prototype, we learned how to construct a local server and an open web server so we all could edit the code at the same time, we learned how to build and implement a chat box in a website, and how to make a login screen for our website.

What's up for the project in the future:

By producing a smart, accurate, precise and automated analysis of student data CollAPP's core algorithm can obtain though CUNY DegreeWorks, events attended, personal and educational interests, CUNY CollAPP will be the best meta analytical data source in the city that no other University can produce. By continuously feeding student data obtained through CUNY DegreeWorks, events attended, personal and educational interests, CUNY CollAPP's core will produce accurate and precise automated metadata analysis that no other University in the City can match. This will be of high value to not only students seeking to collaborate successfully and seamlessly, but to marketing research, Business hiring managers in the public or private sectors, educational and scholarship company's. I once witnessed two big trash cans filled with rejected resumes from students in IVY league Universities with CUNY CollAPP will give the student the edge that no other university can offer, because GPA and resume's are simply not enough. We learned Web Development and Business administration. CUNY CollAPP Highlighting the U in University.