ElectiveSense

Inspiration

As an OSU student, choosing electives often feels confusing and time-consuming. Most of the process depends on asking friends, searching Reddit, or stumbling across a course by accident. I noticed how many students said, “If I knew this course existed earlier, I would have taken it.” As a design student exploring healthcare, I personally struggled to find courses that aligned with both my background and interests. This inspired me to build ElectiveSense — a tool that makes elective discovery simple, intentional, and personalized.

What it does

ElectiveSense helps OSU students quickly find electives that match their interests, goals, and academic direction. You simply describe your program and what you’re curious about — for example, “I study design and want to explore healthcare” — and the system instantly recommends relevant courses. It also helps you safely explore courses outside your department, making it easier to discover interdisciplinary opportunities you might not know exist.

How we built it

Built the tool using Lovable’s AI-assisted development platform.

Created a structured course dataset with tags for design, healthcare, public health, informatics, psychology, human factors, and other interdisciplinary fields.

Added intelligent matching logic so the system can interpret natural language and recommend courses that align with the student’s background.

Designed a clean interface that prioritizes clarity, simplicity, and easy exploration.

Integrated course detail pages with direct links to official OSU course pages.

Added a dark-mode first theme with a toggle to switch to light mode.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the AI to understand nuanced interdisciplinary interests (like combining design + healthcare). Expanding the dataset to include courses across multiple colleges without overwhelming the user. Ensuring recommendations felt personalized instead of generic. Managing UI consistency while rapidly iterating during the hackathon timeframe. Handling edge cases where users describe interests in unconventional ways.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a functional and intuitive elective-matching tool in a short amount of time. Created a system that genuinely reduces the stress around elective selection. Enabled students to explore outside their department safely and intentionally. Produced a design that is simple, accessible, and easy to navigate. Developed a recommendation flow that feels natural and helpful.

What we learned

How to structure prompts and datasets to produce meaningful AI-generated recommendations. The value of thoughtful user experience in academic decision-making tools. How common elective uncertainty actually is — students across different colleges share the same pain points. How quickly AI-assisted development can bring an idea to life.

What's next for ElectiveSense Expanding the course dataset across all OSU colleges and programs. Adding student reviews, real experiences, and course insights. Integrating OSU login for personalized recommendations and academic history. Building a schedule helper to show how electives fit into a weekly timetable. Partnering with advisors or departments to improve elective awareness. Turning ElectiveSense into a full student academic discovery tool.

Built With

• lovable