Learnvisor

INSPIRATION

Across all schools in the United States, the average counselor to student ratio is a striking 1 to 464 (schoolcounselors.org). With there not being enough counselors to accommodate for the large number of students at each school, it is common for high school students to have trouble receiving assistance from their school counselors. As high school students ourselves, this phenomenon is something we’ve directly experienced a multitude of times. Not only that, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has only served to exacerbate the situation as physical meetups and conversations become impossible. To combat this problem, our team developed Learnvisor, a website that provides counseling services and other assistance to high school students.

WHAT IT DOES

Learnvisor was created to assist high schoolers plan ahead for the future, serving a role similar to that of a counselor. It has an abundance of helpful features, such as a course guidance tool, an email drafter, and a calendar students can add to their own Gmail account. The course guidance tool takes in a student’s course history and returns feedback by recommending possible courses to take next and suggesting viable college tracks. It does this through an algorithm based on two factors: the student’s academic preferences and performance. On the other hand, the email drafter feature generates formal emails addressed to counselors regarding transcripts, schedule modifications, letters of recommendation, and more to streamline emailing for students. Lastly, Learnvisor also offers numerous valuable resources along with a calendar in a centralized location to aid students in the grueling college application process.

HOW WE BUILT IT

Our goal was to make Learnvisor accessible to all high school students at any given moment in time. For this reason, we made Learnvisor a website, so it would be available to anyone with an Internet connection. To code our website, we used the platform Repl.it, which enabled us to work simultaneously on one project. As for Learnvisor itself, the basic structure of our webpage was created with HTML, whereas the interactive features of Learnvisor, such as the email drafter, were accomplished with JavaScript. Lastly, in order to make our website visually appealing to its users, our team used Bootstrap and CSS for layout, colors, fonts, and formatting.

CHALLENGES WE FACED

While developing Learnvisor, we ran into two major challenges: incorporating Bootstrap and producing the interactive portions of the website. Due to our limited experience with Bootstrap and the given time restraint, we were unable to implement as many design elements as we had initially planned. The course guidance tool and email drafter were especially challenging to format due to the sheer number of elements on one page. These two features of our website were not only difficult to format, but were arduous to create as well. Our lack of familiarity with JavaScript merely added on to the plethora of issues we encountered, not to mention our increasing frustration. Another challenge was accommodating for the widely varying schedules of each team member. Each member was available at different times, which presented a large obstacle to collaboration.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS WE’RE PROUD OF

We set our vision on developing a solution for a common problem high schoolers like us encounter on a regular basis. Our main accomplishment was achieving this vision through the successful completion of our website. Other than that, we all take pride in the fact that we were able to persist through the various difficulties that arose throughout the development of our website, and are proud of our growth in web development. The skills we learned along the way will undeniably be incredibly helpful when creating another website in the future.

WHAT WE LEARNED

We learned to use Bootstrap for the very first time during this hackathon. This included importing the Bootstrap CDN, understanding Bootstrap’s grid system, and utilizing Bootstrap’s CSS classes in conjunction with our own CSS code to style the frontend of our website. Not only that, we also improved upon our previous knowledge of JavaScript. A great amount of JavaScript code was required in order to implement key features into our website, and since we were inexperienced with the language, we had to work under pressure to rapidly build upon our JavaScript skills.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR LEARNVISOR

We’re quite proud of all we were able to accomplish in the short amount of time allocated, but we believe that Learnvisor can be improved in various ways. For instance, an account system that automatically saves the courses inputted and continually provides feedback over time would greatly enhance the user experience. Another feature we had in mind building upon the personal accounts was a discussion board forum, where users would be able to interact with other students from their school and receive direct advice from upperclassmen. Overall, we hope to continue updating and maintaining this project so it can truly make a difference for struggling high schoolers.