Our inspiration
A couple of years back, my friends and I decided to volunteer and tutor students from disadvantaged backgrounds. At that time, we were at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Singapore's "Circuit breaker" had been just rolled out, the most vulnerable groups of society were being hit the hardest. In particular, younger students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds were even further set back, as many of them became more isolated from educational support system than ever.
In order to aid these students, some NGOs and small communities in Singapore took it upon themselves to start online tutoring services, such as Covid-19 Tutoring Support for Students. They would act as agencies, calling for the more disadvantaged students and willing volunteer tutors to contact them one-by-one, then manually connect the students to the volunteers.
Although this system did work, it did have its faults. For instance, when faced with high volumes of applications, the moderators were much more likely to make human errors and miss out on participants, or provide the wrong information. On top of that, the system was overall a slow and inefficient process, with each application taking quite some time to be processed.
As such, my friends and I wanted to automate this entire process. Taking inspiration from other popular websites like Smart Guppy(https://www.smartguppy.com/), Khan Academy(https://www.khanacademy.org/profile/me/courses) and Duolingo(https://www.duolingo.com/) we came together to create a "one-stop shop" educational platform and program in the form of a website.
What it does
Students' interface Due to the time constraints, our team was only able to complete the student interface for Kiasu Students Our website is a "one-stop shop" for every type of educational enrichment a child might need in order to boost their academic performances. When registering as a "student", users are required to provide relevant personal details, such as their age, current academic grade and the academic subjects they are learning. All of this information helps us to personalise the experience for the users.
For instance, younger students (aged 7 to 12) would have additional access to educational games, making the entire learning process much more appealing for their demography. Older students (aged 15 to 16) would be regularly quizzed on the various topics as they progress their learning in order to ensure and maintain their understanding of their own academic subjects.
All students would have access to resources (including worksheets, past exam papers, notes & videos) and the "Book-A-Tutor" system, where they are able to receive guidance and clarification from tutor volunteers. For resources, resources would be systematically filed according to Grade/Level => Subject => Topic, and only the resources relevant to the student's educational background would be recommended. For the "Book-A-Tutor" system, students would be able to browse through the available tutors based on their available timings and required subjects, and pick a tutor.
To further gameify the experience, we had also planned to include a reward system. This reward system would allow students to earn badges (achievements) as they progressed, and would encourage them to maintain their "streak", whereby they have to consistently log on to the website and make some progress on a daily basis.
To motivate tutors, tutors' volunteering hours will be recorded down and tutors will be able to earn badges (achievements) as they volunteer more hours. For student volunteers, the recorded volunteering hours could also be a reliable and efficient proof for Virtue In Action (VIA) hours for schools.
How we built it
Our workflow was to first draw up a flowchart on the features we wanted to add and which page led to which, then we split up the job into different pages for each of us to code. We did a lot of troubleshooting and trial and error to figure out which code works and where. As we did not have much familiarity with javascript, we decided to just focus on how the webpage would look like instead of adding too many functionalities. This involved the use of html and CSS. We used visual studio code and at the end sent our html files to our team leader Kait to compile everything.
Challenges we ran into
Our initial plan was to use python as that was the most common language and some of our teammates had learnt it before. However, through the introduction of the problem statement we realised that as a back-end language, python might not have much use for solving social problems. For that, we needed to build an app or a website.
So we ended up learning the basics of a whole new language in a day, combing the internet for videos and sample code on html and css. We might never have made it without the 2x speed option on youtube or the comprehensive list of functions on W3S.
One of our biggest challenges was in formatting the page layout after as that included CSS and CSS was a script which had a lot of parameters to define. In addition, we had to pick up and sort through the various attributes and functionalities of html along the way, further increasing our level of difficulty.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
As a team, we worked closely together to overcome challenges together. By developing our game plan and envisioning what our final product would look like early on, we were able to collaborate with minimal communication problems. Our ability to solve problems together, helping one another, made the process much more efficient and effective. Moreover, since it was our first hackathon and coding with HTML and CSS, we were learning as we went along, and we are proud to say that we have gained substantial knowledge and experience from this journey, and realised our passion for this field.
What we learned
Since all four of us had close to no experience with HTML or CSS, it was a challenge to have to learn to code a website from scratch. However, in order to overcome this challenge, we had to familiarise ourselves with HTML and CSS in a short duration. This required a great deal of research and adaptability as we tried to overcome the many challenges that came our way. From a practical standpoint, we gained experience in coding and website creation, as well as developed a deeper understanding of a new language. As a team, we learnt to delegate work and work cohesively to think through problems that we faced. We had to learn to be resourceful in order to find resources that could effectively teach beginners like us.
What we learned
Since all four of us had close to no experience with HTML or CSS, it was a challenge to have to learn to code a website from scratch. However, in order to overcome this challenge, we had to familiarise ourselves with HTML and CSS in a short duration. This required a great deal of research and adaptability as we tried to overcome the many challenges that came our way. From a practical standpoint, we gained experience in coding and website creation, as well as developed a deeper understanding of a new language. As a team, we learnt to delegate work and work cohesively to think through problems that we faced. We had to learn to be resourceful in order to find resources that could effectively teach beginners like us.
What's next for kiasu students
Our product is currently adapted for our Singapore context, with lessons and resources following MOE's syllabus, in order to guide students to success! For future developments of Kiasu Students, we can expect to expand and update our content to adapt to the various South-East Asian countries' educational standards, and eventually the World.
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