** 1) Inspiration and Functioning: **
Volunteering through a tutoring organisation sometimes assumes lot of commitment and dedication. Not everyone who wants to be of positive help to the community could be able to do this, due to busy lifestyle or work schedule. However, with TutorFinder such individuals will be able to volunteer and teach at their own spare time, at their personal convienience.
Not only does this increase the amount of resources available for our students to learn from, but also helps tutors build their experiences in education. TutorFinder as of now, functions completely as a non-profit platform!
** 2) What it does: **
TutorFinder acts as a intermediary between a student in seek for help regarding academic doubts and mentors who are willing to volunteer! Students would be able to search for available slots over multiple tutors teaching the subject they are looking for. After the student has picked a specific time and tutor that they find most convienient with, they would have to submit their personal information and finally an email is automatically sent to the registered tutor through Twilio's API.
** 3) How we built it: **
The main programming languages/technologies that we used for this project were Javascript, node.js, HTML and Twilio. The website essentially has two interfaces, one for students, which allows them to select mentors, and the other for administrative staff, which allows them to keep a track of students tutoring sessions and progress (which is still under progress).
We used Twilio's API Key to automate an emailing feature to one specific receipient at a time. This process is triggered using the onclick function of javascript, when confirming the student's personal details. The 'from' address is a personal domain that we possess which is facilitated through GoDaddy's domain, whereas, the 'to' address is always the email address of the tutor that has been chosen.
** 4) Challenges we ran into: **
Most of the challenges we ran into were related to automating email responses through Twilio, as this is the first time using the software or even any API. However, after some hours of learning and trial and error, we were able to figure out how to do it smoothly.
Initially being a team of 5, we were reduced to 3, due to unfortunate circumstances, and consequently had a higher work load on eac h of us. Today we worked on several new concepts we havent touched upon before such as server-side javascript and API Programming. Our team also consists of different STEM disciplines and we required more time to adjust to the steep learning curve than expected.
** 5) Accomplishments that we're proud of: **
Given that the challenges we faced related to Twilio and APIs were for the first time, we think it is an accomplishment worth mentioning since we managed to do it within 12 hours of work, after reconsidering our initial idea.
We are also satisfied with how we managed our limited time after a midway change in our project, and how we collaborated further from there. We split our work on basis of expertise and even went further and beyond to learn skills on the spot before implementing it in action.
** 6) What we learned: **
All the members in our team learnt something new today (while having fun obviously). We learnt new skills such as APIs, client-side and server-side programming. However, in a broader sense we learnt how to collaborate and work under time constrained situations. Under pressure it is often difficult to stay up to date on tasks and report to the team, but we did a good job at staying under deadlines and being productive throughout the night.
** 7) What's next for tutorFinder: **
There is so much more potential to TutorFinder that we could not plan and implement today. A much more detailed and effecient method to filter and sort mentors could be implemented, using factors such as curriculum (to match the syllabus as close as possible), language (to ensure that everyone irrespective of nationality can use the service), time zone compatability and incentives for volunteers!
As of now, to make this idea practical we would have to look for volunteers from amongst our personal circles, however, the scalability of our venture means it would be simple to eventually rely on volunteers from outside our immediate social networks. We strongly believe that given time and resources we can definately improve the efficiency of our program!
We really look forward to developing the entrepreneurial aspect of our idea. We would be very keen to try and incentivize the volunteers through methods such as certification from a reputated sponsoring agency/NGO that would be willing to partner with us.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.