HippoCampus Learner

Create flashcards on the web!

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Inspiration

We noticed that like us, many students learning online might not be taking the time to study materials covered in class on their own, so we created HippoCampus Learner for a solution. We were inspired by Duolingo and Quizlet, and noticed that Quizlet's flashcard format was almost universally regarded by our peers as a good, fast, effective way to study materials. However, we still felt that it was missing something, which is Duolingo's daily reminder and a challenge that will remind you to take your daily lessons. From this inspiration, we thought of implementing a similar feature into our program, but rather than make it daily, we wanted to add an extra layer revolving around spaced interval learning(SIL). Spaced interval learning is the idea that the more you review a concept, the longer you will retain the information. Here is a graph that shows the effects of SIL, and how long a student needs to study to retain newly-learned information: (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bo_Ae_Chun/publication/324816198/figure/fig1/AS:620205050982405@1524879815703/Ebbinghaus-forgetting-curve-and-review-cycle.png)

What it does

HippoCampus Learner allows users to create their very own set of flashcards, giving them the ability to categorize which cards they are the most and which cards they are the least confident answering.

How we built it

We built it using mainly HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, while touching on topics such as React and Bootstrap to assist In our development. We used repl.it for its impressive collaboration features as well as its compatibility with git.

Challenges we ran into

One big challenge we faced was communication. Our team was composed of people who had to go to work, who lived in different time zones, people who went to completely different universities. As you can imagine that meant there was very little time in which all four members could get on at the same time, people making changes without others being aware, but once we got through that we were able to use our different time zones/schedules in order to have at least one person at a time working on the project resulting in almost constant progress.

We also had to overcome the challenge of formatting the website, and making sure the site will be mobile-compatible. It took a while for the layout to be accurate on phones, but after experimenting a bit, we were able to make the website mobile-compatible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud of our fully-functional cards, as well as having been able to properly format the site into a mobile-friendly display.

What we learned

We learned not only more about how JavaScript can serve to add broader functionality to websites, but also learned how to a lot about better study techniques and when you should study for peak efficiency, which already makes our site a success!

What's next for HippoCampus Learner

In the future, we hope to implement a spaced interval learning reminder system and a calendar to show when a student's next study session will be.

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