Gator Brains

This website was created in order to connect students studying similar courses and facilitate collaborative study sessions while fostering a supportive learning community.

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Inspiration

As avid Marston-Goers, there are many times where we (individually) are sitting by ourselves and then overhear the table next to us studying for the same exam we are. So for the times where you are by yourself and want to see if there are other people studying for the same class, you can use this application to create a group study!

What it does

Essentially, the user creates a login and then selects a specific floor of Marston they are looking to study on. From there, they will be able to see study sessions that are currently active and see what class they are studying for. With that information, you'll then be able to go up to that group and ask to study with them.

It's different than overhearing a group and asking to join them, because they may not want others to join them. Here, if the group does not want others to join, then they simply can just choose to not use Gator Brains.

How we built it

After deciding what we wanted our project to be, plus the features we wanted to have for it, we began by dividing into two teams, Frontend and Backend (2 per team), where each of us worked in our respective teams. We downloaded Docker, Postman, Node.js, etc. after researching what tools would be the best. Then we decided what functions we needed, and started coding the initial Front and Backend. Then as we continued coding our functions, we ran into a lot of errors which we attempted to resolve together. Finally, we began on integrating the Frontend and Backend together to get our final product.

Challenges we ran into

This was everyone in the team's first hackathon, so we ran into a lot of problems both technically and as a programming team.

  • There were a lot of Frontend issues as we weren't entirely familiar with how to do it, and had to learn on the spot how to do it.
  • It was almost the same for the Backend, but one of our teammates had experience working Backend, so he was able to contribute greatly (thank you Michael!)
  • We realized towards the end that we needed communication between the two teams at the beginning so that the database could be integrated into the Frontend easier.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Launching our first web application!
  • Doing remarkably well for all of ours's first Hackathon!
  • Learning so much about Frontend and Backend development. It will definitely be helpful for when we start moving on to bigger and better projects.

What we learned

  • It's important to have communication between our two teams
  • It was also really helpful to become more aware of all the resources online that are available to help us with most of our issues.
  • You can learn a loooot of stuff in just 24 hours.

What's next for Gator Brains

There's a lot of stuff we'd like to implement for Gator Brains

  • Resolve all the issues with our current implementation.
  • Finish developing the Active User tab that will display all of the Users currently studying on a selected floor.
  • Add the option to leave the study group, rather than leaving when the browser is closed. This would remove that user from the Study Session's Members list, and once that list is empty, the Study Session will end on its own.
  • Include Library West as an option.
  • Improve the UI/UX.
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