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Squad - Create or join a squad with your friends, earn XP, and compete against other squads before your exam.
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Classes - Find your SFU classes, join other students, and check where your squad stands on the leaderboard.
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Daily Challenges - Take a break from studying and play fun side challenges to earn extra XP every day!
Inspiration
We were inspired by Kahoot and Canvas and wanted to make studying with classmates more interactive and competitive. Instead of just reviewing notes on your own, we wanted students to be able to study together, challenge their friends, and earn points.
What it does
Synapse lets students join their university classes and create or join study squads with their classmates.
Students can upload their lecture slides or notes to generate quiz questions using AI. They can then compete with their friends or join challenges created by other students.
There are also leaderboards that track both individual XP and squad rankings, so students can see how they compare to others in their class.
We also added daily side challenges, including a maze game, where students can take a break from studying and earn extra XP.
How we built it
We built Synapse as a web application using JavaScript, Next.js, React, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS for the frontend.
We used Supabase for the backend and database to manage classes, squads, and user data. We also integrated Google's Gemini API to generate quiz questions from uploaded course materials.
Challenges we ran into
One of our biggest challenges was connecting all the different features together, especially making sure classes, squads, XP, and leaderboards worked properly with each other.
We also had to figure out how to handle uploaded course materials and turn them into useful quiz questions using Gemini.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We built a system where students can join classes, form squads, compete on leaderboards, and earn XP through both studying and daily challenges.
We're also happy with how the interface turned out and how the different parts of the app fit together.
What we learned
This project gave us more experience building a full-stack web application and working with technologies like Next.js, React, Supabase, and the Gemini API.
We also learned more on connecting frontend and backend features, managing a project as a team, and making decisions under time pressure.
What's next for Synapse
We want to keep improving the AI-generated questions and add more ways for students to compete and study together.
We're also planning to expand the daily challenges with more mini-games, improve the leaderboard and XP system, and eventually support more universities and courses beyond SFU.
