Costudify

A timetable-sharing website for students to easily organize study groups or fun hangouts.

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Inspiration

Many social apps already exist; some match dating partners, some match friends. But not many target the educational benefits of meeting other people. We wanted to help students make the most of their free time on campus by making it easy for them to find people who they have the time to study with.

What it does

UofT's ACORN system has an option to export students' timetables as an ICS file. When users register for our website, they upload their timetable along with some personal info. A heatmap visualizer shows the timeslots when students are available. There is also a search feature that allows students to look up other registered students' timetables, removing the need to ask "are you free rn?" or "wats ur schedule?".

How we built it

Upon registration, our program converts the information in ICS files into CSV format, allowing it to easily be stored in an accessible database. Then, it checks every hour in the week and calculates how many students have a class at that time. We used Flask to construct a light web interface that can easily visualize the information.

Challenges we ran into

This was our first time working together at a hackathon! We're also new to Flask and the full-stack development process in general.

Future plans

Our goal was to create a simple tool to help university students study together without the hassle. We see our concept being tested in the U of T system before being expanded to different schools. One feature we wanted but didn't have time to incorporate was a campus study room browser that displays open and occupied study rooms (with data taken from school website).

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