CourseCoach

Inspiration

The inspiration for this app comes from the struggles many students face when selecting courses and planning their academic schedules. The complexity of graduation requirements, prerequisite chains, and varying course schedules often leads to stress, missed prerequisites, or even delayed graduations. We wanted to eliminate this confusion by developing a solution that simplifies course selection and degree planning through intuitive flowcharts, AI-powered recommendations, and data-driven schedule optimizations. This app helps ensure students stay on track to graduate on time, while optimizing their schedules to avoid unnecessary burdens like inconvenient class times.

What it does

Interactive Flowcharts: Visualize a student’s progress and outline the specific courses required to complete a major or minor, showing clear prerequisite chains and allowing users to track their progress easily. Course Prerequisite Mapping: The app will show what courses students need to take to satisfy the prerequisites of higher-level courses, helping them plan ahead. Course Input: Students can input the classes they've already completed, and the app will update their flowchart accordingly. AI Advisor: The AI recommends future courses based on the student’s completed coursework and preferences, ensuring they remain on track without missing any requirements.

How we built it

We used Next.js for its server-side rendering and API integration, along with TypeScript for type safety and improved developer experience. Then we integrated the ChatGPT API to power the AI advisor, enabling personalized course recommendations based on a student's academic history. And finally for the front-end, we used Chakra UI to create a clean, responsive, and component-driven design across devices.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating the ChatGPT API presented a challenge as we had to fine-tune the model's responses to ensure accurate and relevant course recommendations. This was also our first time ever using ChatGPT API so it was hard to get over the learning curve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully built an interactive course flowchart that is visually appealing and functional, allowing students to see their academic path at a glance. Built a scalable platform capable of handling degree requirements across multiple majors and universities. Integrated AI-powered course recommendations, which significantly improve the user experience by automating course suggestions based on user history.

What we learned

Learned how to create a ChatGPT wrapper as well as figuring out how to navigate Vanderbilt's course catalog.

What's next for CourseMap

Expand to other universities, using PDF parsing and NLP to automatically pull course data from university catalogs, making the app usable for students nationwide. Enhance the AI Advisor, incorporating sentiment analysis from course reviews to further personalize course recommendations. Improve the flowchart's interactivity, allowing students to drag and drop courses into their planned schedules while seeing the effects on their graduation progress. Add collaborative features, allowing students to share their planned schedules with peers or advisors for feedback.