Hokie Campus Helper

The Hokie Helper

Inspiration: We developed “Hokie Campus Helper” to support students struggling to locate their way across Virginia Tech’s campus and discover their community. It is a valuable experience to be a part of a community and grow through the many challenges and opportunities that you can find on-campus. When we first joined Virginia Tech each of us had different struggles. We built this tool to support other Hokies going through their own challenges navigating campus life. What it does: Hokie Campus Helper can help you locate transportation methods around Blacksburg, connect with cultural communities and groups of interest, find research and job opportunities, obtain both mental and physical health aid, and get nutritional recommendations regarding your dietary preferences.

How we built it: Using DataBricks, we created 5 notebooks representing 5 essential services supporting all hokies (Dining, Transport, Health, Professional Networking, Community Development). The notebooks parse data scraped from publicly available resources. Genie from Databricks, Hokie ai, and Gemini provided the foundation to form the structure of the project. Challenges we ran into: We initially attempted to tackle a more technically inclined challenge; however when we lost a member we had to pivot into another challenge to reflect the new team composition. The limited resources to use databricks, such as the length of time needed to iterate the tools was another challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of: Discovering new technologies such as Databricks, while learning to overcome resource constraints. Improving teamwork cohesion and task distribution as we worked throughout the project. Seeing the project through and having something functional.

What we learned: We developed an understanding of technical skills and improved teamwork skills. Julian: How much fun hands-on practice is and how readily you'll learn doing hackathons, 10/10 experience. Also, just how many tools are out there and how to use them in tandem for a better project. Senuda: Learning more about DataBricks and getting more hands-on experience with GitHub. Experiencing what it means to be involved in a Hackathon. Elizabeth: Developed an understanding of technical technologies, teamwork skills, and explored interests.

What's next for Hokie Campus Helper: Implement time series into the bus transport agent so that the app can predict bus arrival times based on historical patterns, along with the gym agent. Better incorporate the use of ai to provide more intelligent, specialized personal answers for users. Find better databases to support the Databricks framework Partner with the VT Cultural Center to get a list of upcoming events to reach students to get better connections. Connect with offices On-Campus such as RWB and Cook Counseling to ensure proper information about student safety is distributed. Add functionality to mascot for desired appearance and attitude Develop a partnership with rec sports and Blacksburg Transit to gain access to historical data for accurate, time-serious forecasting using tiger data