Studious Start

Inspiration

Our team is composed of second year students and looking back on our first year and thinking of our transition into university, we decided to create an app that compiles all of the resources—and some of our own—that we found to be useful for first year engineering students at the University of Alberta in a convenient manner.

What it does

CLASS COMPASS

Navigate the campus efficiently by identifying the quickest routes to their classes.
Search the abbreviation of the building

SYLLABUS SIMPLIFIER

Simplify course syllabi by highlighting the key topics, making it easier for users to quickly understand the most important information
Upload a pdf of their class syllabus, and the “Simplified Syllabus” Google Sheets will automatically be updated in a few minutes with just the key details of the syllabus through the power of machine learning!

VIDEO VAULT

Filters YouTube videos tailored to engineering courses and specific topics
Easily search for relevant materials previous students found useful to support their learning and engineering journey

PROF POLL

Access insights and experiences from former students regarding the professors for each of their first-year engineering courses
Streamline selecting a professor whose teaching style aligns with their personal learning preferences

NETWORK NEXUS

Effortlessly expand your connections with Network Nexus.
Seamless searching of names directly on LinkedIn, allowing users to quickly find and connect with others. Perfect for networking on the go!

CAMPUS CRUSH

Note down individuals that catch your eye
Keep track of important details

How we built it

To conveniently view how our html, css, and js code displayed, we used CodePen
We combined our own resources with existing resources
We used openAI API to parse through the syllabus text and extract it to a Google Sheet

Challenges we ran into

We do want it to be both desktop and mobile friendly but with the time constraints, we mainly kept it mobile friendly

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Self learned multiple software and coding practices through resources such as Youtube and Stack Overflow
Collaborated to exchange insights and troubleshoot technical challenges, drawing from personal experience and diverse perspectives to brainstorm effective, user-centered solutions
Developed an intelligent syllabus parsing feature using OpenAI's machine learning algorithm to streamline key content extraction in the Syllabus Simplifier
Designed an intuitive and easy to navigate UI, ensuring a smooth and easy experience for any student!

What we learned

We learned how effective planning and having systems is in developing a project
How to integrate and work with APIs to expand our app’s capabilities
Learned how to create automated workflows through Zapier, enabling effective synchronization between APIs
How to self learn unfamiliar programs and coding languages (e.g. HTML, JavaScript, CSS)
The difference between front end development and backend development
We learned that we enjoy web development!