First Gen Friends

Inspiration

One of us is a first-generation college student (freshman) and the other is a first-generation college graduate (graduate student). We know about some of the challenges that first-generation college students face and were hoping to create an app that would allow first-generation college students to create a community on their college campus and allow them to have resources (such as financial or study tips) that allow them to succeed.

56% of undergraduate students who enrolled in the 2015 academic year had parents who did not obtain a bachelor's degree (RTI International 2019). Many of these students face struggles that other students do not that can cause students to drop out, such as: challenges making friends, not having enough resources to succeed, and not understanding finances (Greenthal 2019).

Sources:
*RTI International. (2019). First-generation College Students: Demographic Characteristics and Postsecondary Enrollment. Washington, DC: NASPA. Retrieved from https://firstgen.naspa.org/files/dmfile/FactSheet-01.pdf *Greenthal, Sharon. (2019). 5 Big Challenges for First Generation College Students. Verywell Family. Retrieved from https://www.verywellfamily.com/big-challenges-for-first-generation-college-students-4121641

What it does

Right now, First Gen Friends is just a domain name and connected to Google Cloud.

How we built it

We used the free code from Domain.com and connected it to Google Cloud. jinyaoMa's vuepress-theme-mustom code on GitHub was used as the website template.

Challenges we ran into

We attempted to use Flutter and Android studio to create an interface and were planning to use Java to code in. We were hoping to at least put together a dictionary of academic terms for the website/app. However, we spent time attending workshops and after many tries did not succeed in using Flutter.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to successfully match our Google Cloud to our Domain.com address, which was a small accomplishment, but something we struggled with at first (firstgenfriends.space).

What we learned

This was our first hackathon, we learned a lot about new technologies that we had never heard of before the hackathon (Google Cloud, Flutter, Flask) and attempting to use them gave us a lot of ideas for the future! Specifically, we learned what Google Cloud is, how to verify your domain on Google Cloud, how to register a domain with Domain.com, and how to upload a website template to my Google Cloud domain.

What's next for First Gen Friends

We are hoping for the website/app that will have tabs for 1) an anonymous message board to ask questions that first-generation students might be afraid to ask (Example: "What are office hours?"), 2) a way for students to form study groups (to build a first-gen community on campus and build study skills), 3) have financial aid tips, and other resources to help students succeed, and 4) have a dictionary of academic terms.

As of right now the website template is done by jinyaoMa, but in the future we will be creating the website template using our own code.