Inspiration
Happy Week 5 at Dartmouth...also known as MIDTERM SEASON 😱! As busy students juggling classes, jobs, extracurriculars, and yes, even hackathons (😉), we've always been on the lookout for an effective, engaging, and novel way to study. While study sites like Quizlet can be great, it's also quite tedious to stare at a computer screen for hours, creating and typing out your own flashcards to work with. Additionally, we've often felt underprepared for exams, limited by both time constraints and a scarcity of practice materials given to us to study with. That's why we built 'What The Yap?', a way to learn while hitting the gym, cooking dinner, or even winding down before bed —essentially any time when our hands and eyes are busy, but our minds are free and ready to learn!
Users can upload any document (readings, assignments, etc.) as well as class notes to instantly generate endless practice questions through the help of an AI. In addition, this project brings a nostalgic twist by reviving the classic study method of oral repetition — a time-honored technique from the past, now enhanced with modern AI. Research has shown that verbalizing study material can significantly enhance learning outcomes, as one can articulate what they're learning and engage in multiple cognitive processes that aid in memory retention. All of these elements — a desire for more practice questions, a need for efficient studying, and current research on effective study methods — came together to result in our final product of "What The Yap?", giving you to the option study solely through the voice. It's an accessible, effective, and engaging study tool for anyone to use!
What it does
What the Yap? lets you quickly generate study sets using AI-powered tools. Then, you can either use it like a normal flashcard and quiz website (using AI to validate your answers), OR as a voice powered tool that will read the flashcards/quiz questions to you, listen for your response (validating with AI), and provide feedback. What The Yap? is designed to be highly accessible, allowing users to engage with educational content purely through voice commands. It is a technology for any auditory learner, anyone with visual impairments, or anyone who wants to maximize their time and transform morning runs or commutes into a simultaneous opportunity for learning.
How we built it
We built it using a variety of tools. We used node.js for the backend, with a Firebase system to keep track of authentication and users' study sets. We also integrated with ChatGPT API to generate the flashcards, quizzes, and validate answers. We used React and Tailwind for the frontend, using the Microsoft Azure Speech SDK to turn text-to-speech and speech-to-text. We also used Zustand to manage states on the frontend.
Challenges we ran into
Due to the variety of tools we used, we had to spend a long time trying to integrate all of these tools and debug the issues that arose. Combining firebase, Azure, OpenAI, and more into a single project was challenging, and especially since it was our first time working with many of these tools!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Making this all happen in 24 hours! It truly was a big project, and there were times where we didn't think we could get a working product. We are happy with the clean design of the site, getting it deployed and functional, and turning our ideas into a real, viable product! We are especially proud of our voice to text recognition features — please check it out!
What we learned
With a lot of determination and collaboration, this experience showed us how we can complete a large project in a short amount of time. We also dedicated a fair amount of time in the initial stages in sketching out architecture diagrams and working out the overall flow of our product. It proved to be handy once we actually started coding, especially while working in a team, allowing us to have a common understanding of our scope and goals.
What's next for What the Yap?
Further developing the website! Improving all of the features, including more ways to study, customized lesson plans, and more. We would also love to restyle things to work perfectly work on a phone, or just create a mobile app version of What the Yap! We also want to add a community feature — support for users to share study sets with others and / or encourage one another's progress (i.e. a fellow classmate preparing for an exam with you, a friend you are learning a language with before traveling to a foreign country together, etc.).
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