Inspiration
COVID-19 has presented students and teachers with unparalleled challenges. As college students, we have experienced the difficulties associated with online learning firsthand. Not only are students having trouble adjusting to the online classroom, teachers are also struggling to adapt. While many people have proposed solutions to the challenges of online learning, little attention has been given to the difficulties of online teaching. One issue that teachers are facing is the constant struggle to keep students engaged. Therefore, we decided to make ParticiPay, a web application targeted towards elementary and middle school students that motivates kids to participate in class and get excited about learning again.
Additionally, many young students are having trouble engaging in the online-learning environment. ParticiPay encourages students to complete their work on time and participate in class by allowing them to compete with their classmates and earn rewards.
What it does
Our web application aims to provide students with incentives to facilitate online learning within their own homes. The application has 3 main pages: a page to display a student’s points and customized profile along with assignments imported from Canvas or Google Classroom, a leaderboard to encourage healthy competition between students, and a store where students can buy teacher specified awards varying from profile cosmetics to homework passes. This app hopes to Our web application aims to provide students with incentives to facilitate online learning within their own homes by creating a rewards system where students can use points to purchase profile pictures, audio clips, and more to enhance their profile. ParticiPay encourages students to complete their work on time and participate in class by allowing them to compete with their classmates and earn rewards.
The application has 3 main pages: a page to display a student’s points and customized profile along with assignments imported from Canvas or Google Classroom, a leaderboard to encourage healthy competition between students, and a store where students can buy teacher specified awards varying from profile cosmetics to homework passes. This app hopes to introduce a fun game-like aspect to traditional online learning and foster a learning environment where hard work and effort is rewarded. a fun game-like aspect to traditional online learning and foster a natural economy where hard workers are rewarded.
How We built it
We started by breaking the app up into its main components, the Profile, Leaderboard, Store, Teacher Assignments, and Navbar. From there, we realized that these would be best implemented through a framework like React, which allows an app to be broken up similar to the way we had planned it. From there, we started with the basic React App. The first component we built was the Navbar, as this would be used for all the different screens, and was a simple way for us to learn React and get to know the different features of the framework. Once we finished the Navbar, we split up the rest of the app by the components we had made, and each started working. When we had trouble with specific parts, we would use a Teletype feature in our text editors to pair program and collaboratively find a solution. We worked through the night to get many of the main features implemented, and then started working the next morning to clean up the application. The next night, we created the backend for our application using MongoDB, Express, and Node.js. We implemented the Axios framework to create GET and POST requests to our database.
Challenges We ran into
One of the main challenges was learning how to use the technologies available to incorporate the ideas we had in our minds into the actual application. This was a challenge because all of us came into this hackathon with little to zero knowledge of any of the technologies used in the project. Therefore, we first had to spend time learning how to use the new technology and then implementing it into our app all the while working as fast as we could, which was rather difficult.
Another challenge was successfully working collaboratively in a remote environment at a fast pace in order to meet the time requirements. We had various internet connection issues with Zoom, from people cutting out to disconnecting at times. But we managed to still remain productive by distributing the work properly and communicating effectively through other mediums when Zoom was not working.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We were proud that we could learn the React.js framework and Javascript to make a functional web application. We were also able to implement a full stack application using MongoDB, Node.js, and Express, which we are very proud of. We managed to successfully incorporate functionality into our application with almost complete backend functionality. When assignments are completed the user’s points increase, also when profiles are purchased in the store the users picture changes and their points decrease. Additionally, teachers are able to create new assignments that then get added to the student’s to do list.
What We learned
One aspect of the project that taught us a lot was actually the brainstorming phase during which we tried to determine what project to do. We spent hours researching issues impacting the community and learned about the many problems plaguing our society that lacked adequate solutions. We were very torn on a few topics, but eventually chose this project because of our own experiences with the difficulties of remote education.
We also learned the importance of setting realistic goals to be completed under intense time constraints. At first, we envisioned our app to have many more features than would actually be plausible given the time frame. We realized that it is alright to not meet your goals, and that sometimes, you must adjust your goals accordingly.
What's next for ParticiPay
Future directions for this product are to partner with local classes to determine if the product is viable in a classroom setting. A study could be conducted to investigate the benefits of using the app while a survey could ask students and teachers for features they would like implemented.
Some features that could be added to the app include: additional items in the shop or partnership with big brands so students can purchase Disney characters for their profiles. Furthermore, we would like to further optimize our application to function as a Google Classroom or Canvas plugin so that upcoming assignments are automatically synced with the mobile application.
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