Integra

Inspiration

INTEGRA was created to allow access to compiled OpenCourseWare from various universities with a focus on easy file sharing, both viewing and downloading of materials and providing a bookmark system with directory customization capabilities.

INTEGRA was sparked from our experience using OpenCourseWare provided by our campus, which we can access anytime and from anywhere. The OpenCourseWare provides all complete course materials, which can be selected based on faculty, department, or subject. We can feel many benefits, such as allow us to become better prepared for classes so that we may be more engaged during a class.

Another interesting thing about an OpenCourseWare platform is that it is not only students, lecturers, and entities on campus who can access it, but everyone who has the desire to learn and know the course material. Yes, all for free!

"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability." -Henry Ford

From there, we began to think if there was a central platform that collected OpenCourseWare materials such as textbooks and presentation slides from various universities so that the material database presented could be very rich and complete.

In conceptualizing and functional approach, INTEGRA takes inspiration from edX (https://www.edx.org) for the concept of gathering subject material from various universities, takes inspiration from SlideShare (https://www.slideshare.net) for its subject material document sharing function, and takes inspiration from Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com) for the bookmark system function.

What it does

INTEGRA is a platform that provides access to thousands of compiled OpenCourseWare subject materials from universities around the world with a focus on easy file sharing. Apart from sharing access to viewing and downloading subject material, INTEGRA is also designed to provides bookmark system to store and create libraries with directories and categories that users create themselves.

For the initiation stage, INTEGRA collects material using the web scrapping method from various OpenCourseWare sites for universities in the world to be added to INTEGRA's database. Furthermore, we will involve users to develop and enrich the subject material by going through the curation stage by the INTEGRA team.

How we built it

In creating INTEGRA, we start with brainstorming to find the problems and limitations we face. Next, we tried to formulate a platform concept that could be a solution. After we decided to create a web-based subject file sharing platform, we started the work by doing project management and organizing to-do lists using Trello and dividing them into different types of jobs.

To get started with web development, we created a user flow using draw.io, as a web feature development benchmark and illustration. After the user flow structure is complete, we start working on the landing page, authentication page, dashboard page, and profile page in parallel. For front-end development and back-end development, we use Visual Studio Code and Laravel. Also, we use PostgreSQL for managing databases and also Figma for processing UI wireframe and graphic media. Lastly, to collaborate on projects, we use GitHub.

Challenges we ran into

When creating INTEGRA, we faced several challenges. Such as project management and adjust workflows for creating digital projects in groups and remotely, considering this is our first Hackaton participation. Apart from that, we also faced technical problems in scraping data which we then entered into the INTEGRA database.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We can learn something new, such as the web scrapping method from scratch and compile many subject material that spread across universities in the world can be collected in our database. Despite there are many challenges, we are very happy to be able to contribute to helping our friends out there who are having a hard time finding the knowledge they need.

What we learned

From INTEGRA we learned many things about digital product development. We learned how to generate ideas for making digital products, starting from determining problems, finding solutions, and creating products. Another lesson we learned was project management, on how to manage resources to create digital products with our concepts.

What's next for Integra

For the future development of INTEGRA, we hope to be able to develop and improve its quality and features, so that our goal to help anyone who wants to get access to subject material can be conveyed better. Furthermore, we want to develop this platform so that users can be involved, both in enriching the completeness of subject material, but also in the direction of platform development. Lastly, we hope we can develop INTEGRA to be able to generate revenue streams (without burdening users), which then we can distribute the revenue to the subject material makers.