Delta

Inspiration

The inspiration for this project is the growing "University Lag," where the rapid pace of the technology industry often outpaces traditional curriculum. Many students graduate with a degree but lack the specific, modern skills required for 2026 roles. By analyzing the gap between SFU’s courses and current industry demands, this project empowers students to take control of their education.

We were inspired by the SFU courses api and wanted to find a way to implement it into our project. Additionally, we were confused about future course planning to tailor it into job search and give us a leg up in our endeavours. Therefore, we made a dashboard that will indicate which skills are in demand and which courses offer job-ready skills, blending functionality with a smooth, satisfying interface.

What it does

Delta is a career-readiness dashboard designed to help students bridge the gap between their academic studies and the rapidly changing technology industry. The application allows users to select a career path and compare the industry requirements across different years, specifically focusing on the shift toward 2026. By cross-referencing these professional demands with the SFU course database, the tool performs an automated gap analysis. It identifies which skills are currently covered by the curriculum and which ones require independent study. Finally, it provides a quantitative readiness score and suggests official documentation for the missing skills so students can prepare themselves for the workforce effectively.

How we built it

The project was developed using a React frontend initialized with Vite to ensure a fast and responsive user experience. The core logic relies on a custom engine that processes JSON datasets containing years of job requirements and university course descriptions. We implemented fuzzy string matching to connect industry terms with academic course titles, ensuring that minor naming differences did not result in false gaps. The interface was styled using custom CSS to create a professional dashboard environment that includes dynamic progress bars and organized data cards for clear comparison.

Challenges we ran into

One of the main technical hurdles was resolving data mismatches between industry labels and university course naming conventions. We had to refine our matching algorithms several times to handle case sensitivity and partial string inclusions. We also faced significant version control challenges, specifically managing merge conflicts when integrating the study plan logic into the main UI branch. Finally, ensuring the correct logical order in JavaScript was essential to prevent reference errors, particularly when calculating career ratios and resource maps that depended on previously defined datasets.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created a functional product that can impact how students approach course planning to ready their careers.

What we learned

We learned the core design skills to create a decent UI. Our source code features React, Vite and JSON. On the backend, we had hardcoded the courses into the database and implemented logic.