CometPath

Major Selection UI
Transcript Upload and Course Choice UI Part 1
Transcript Upload and Course Choice UI Part 2
Degree Tree and AI-parsed course recommendations

Inspiration

Navigating degree plan requirements and building a four-year schedule can be confusing and overwhelming, especially when it comes to transferring AP and dual enrollment credit, considering different majors, and ensuring all pre-requirements are taken care of ahead of time. We wanted to leverage Nebula Labs’ and Google Gemini’s API to build a web app that can streamline this process for students.

What it does

CometPath’s powerful visuals empower students to lay out their past, current, and future coursework in a streamlined manner that allows them to efficiently organize their courses into their four-year plans and consider the feasibility of switching majors. The web app also offers an AI chatbot that considers students’ course history as well as the relative difficulties of courses offered at UTD to provide insightful suggestions toward achieving a desired degree.

How we built it

We used React for the major frontend with Vite as the build tool, Tailwind CSS for the graphics, and React Flow for visualizing course dependency graphs. The backend is powered by Node.js and Express, with MongoDB for data storage. We integrated Nebula's API to fetch real-time course data and Gemini’s API to serve in the chatbot.

Challenges we ran into

We initially struggled to integrate Nebula's API. Some major information (degree requirements) was not available from the API and had to be hard-coded in. We also struggled to integrate the Gemini API key without accidentally leaking it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of the frontend design of the project; even though it presents a lot of information, it looks sleek and elegant as opposed to cluttered. We are also happy with the successful integration of two APIs.

What we learned

We learned how to work as a team with Git, how to manage time effectively to provide a deliverable in under 24 hours, and how to integrate AI and APIs into a project.

What's next for CometPath

The future of CometPath is further personalization, expanding it to recommend optimal courses based on students’ priorities. For example, some students prioritize having lunch breaks at the same time every day and some prioritize minimizing homework to make time for research or extracurricular projects. CometPath, in the future, will take these personalized goals into account when offering suggestions.