Inspiration
The COVID-19 pandemic has left detrimental and lasting impacts on the US education system. This includes a significant decline in student's academic performance which has led to an increase in teacher-reported burnout. Our goal was to create a tool which can reach and assist both instructors and students alike.
What it does
With the power of AI, we have created an accessible space for students to receive immediate, tailored homework help. Study Nest is an integrated LLM interface which tunes its outputs to the course material and individual. The same system provides individualized review plans for instructors and summaries of the topics students struggle with most based on the questions students asked throughout the week.
How we built it
We built Study Nest using a variety of tools. The back-end is a Go server, built with the Fiber framework, we use a SQLite database to store the data necessary to power the deep AI integration, which was accomplished using Ollama and LangChainGo. The front end was built with HTML Templates and a whole lot of CSS, with just a sprinkle of JavaScript here and there.
Challenges we ran into
Time! While time was out biggest challenge, we also grappled with focusing our functionality, incorporating our front and back end, and learning about new technologies. Nevertheless, we found support in our team and learned to ask questions, as our distributed knowledge was truly key.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud to have created a working prototype of a tool which could help begin bridging the gap between AI and education. The future of AI feels exquisitely inevitable, and the benefit that students and teachers will receive is only at the hands of developers. We feel proud of Study Nest for being a tool which recognizes multiple levels of the education system - students and teachers. Moreover, the balance of functionality leads students to believe it was built for them, and for teachers to believe the same.
What we learned
It is safe to say that each individual in our team learning something new - about programming, technologies, and research. We all came in from different backgrounds but quickly understood that this diversity gave us strength as we were able to problem solve by looking at tasks from multiple different angles. We learned what working with a team that shares the same vision can allow you to create.
What's next for Study Nest
We aim to keep expanding the integration and functionality of Study Nest to create a motivating, engaging tool. Our next feature will include access to the teacher's gradebook and automatic generation of supplementary material and explanations for students struggling with a specific topic or assignment. This instant feedback will facilitate understanding and mastery of the course material while providing integral reports and plans to teachers.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.