## Inspiration

Every college student has to take Gen-Ed classes to fulfill graduation requirements. Often, this process is complicated because there are way too many options and very little information on what Gen-Eds are useful and fun. Navigating Reddit and other sites is a waste of time, and there isn’t a single platform for discovering your next favorite class.

## What it does

ByMyGenEd is a website that matches you with classes based on your preferences. We take your graduation requirements, current major, and desired GPA, and present you with a list of classes. This list, which is presented as a set of interactive, swipeable cards (think of Quizlet or Tinder), includes a lot of information that can help you decide what to do, like past student GPAs, credit hours satisfied, and student reviews. This is what every student needs for finding the perfect GenEd and having the happiest semester of their lives!

## How we built it

Front-end:

* Created a single page application using React.js and JavaScript.
* Used Material-UI for the design.
* Utilized data visualizations with Plotly.js.
* Sent student preferences to the Backend.
* Presented matched courses in an interactive card format created with custom CSS.

Back-end:

* Downloaded UIUC's public class GPA dataset.
* Manipulated dataset and uploaded to our Google Cloud Firestore database.
* Made our back-end with Node.js, where it analyzes the user’s input (GPA and course interests) to match \* the courses from the database with the user’s tastes.
* Set up our Node.js app in Google Cloud App Engine, so that our back-end code runs on the server and the front-end code will access the server.

## Challenges we ran into

* Setting up the Google Cloud server.
* Fetching data from the firestore database via Node.js (especially dealing with asynchronous functions).
* Visualizing course data using React.js libraries.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

* First time using Google Cloud service.
* First time using Node.js and Express.
* Hacking virtually from multiple locations on campus.

## What we learned

* How to use Google Cloud services (such as how to instantiate a cloud firestore database).
* How to set up a Google App Engine server.
* Learning more about Data Visualizations with JavaScript and React.js.
* Learning more aspects of Node.js and the express library.

## What's next for BeMyGenEd

* Include other possible ways to earn course credit (AP/IB Credit, Dual Credit, Proficiency Exams)
* Expand towards other universities.
* Connect to curriculum graduation requirements.
* Add a recommender system on what to take based on your schedule and past courses.
## Inspiration

Oftentimes when we find ourselves not understanding the content that has been taught in class and rarely remembering what exactly is being conveyed. And some of us have the habit of mismatching notes and forgetting where we put them. So to help all the ailing students, there was this idea to make an app that would give the students curated automatic content from the notes which they upload online.

## What it does

A student uploads his notes to the application. The application creates a summary of the notes, additional information on the subject of the notes, flashcards for easy remembering and quizzes to test his knowledge. There is also the option to view other student's notes (who have uploaded it in the same platform) and do all of the above with them as well. We made an interactive website that can help students digitize and share notes!

## How we built it

Google cloud vision was used to convert images into text files. We used Google cloud NLP API for the formation of questions from the plain text by identifying the entities and syntax of the notes. We also identified the most salient features of the conversation and assumed it to be the topic of interest. By doing this, we are able to scrape more detailed information on the topic using google custom search engine API. We also scrape information from Wikipedia. Then we make flashcards based on the questions and answers and also make quizzes to test the knowledge of the student. We used Django as the backend to create a web app. We also made a chatbot in google dialog-flow to inherently enable the use of google assistant skills.

## Challenges we ran into

Extending the platform to a collaborative domain was tough. Connecting the chatbot framework to the backend and sending back dynamic responses using webhook was more complicated than we expected.
Also, we had to go through multiple iterations to get our question formation framework right. We used the assumption that the main topic would be the noun at the beginning of the sentence. Also, we had to replace pronouns in order to keep track of the conversation.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have only 3 members in the team and one of them has a background in electronics engineering and no experience in computer science and as we only had the idea of what we were planning to make but no idea of how we will make. We are very proud to have achieved a fully functional application at the end of this 36-hour hackathon. We learned a lot of concepts regarding UI/UX design, backend logic formation, connecting backend and frontend in Django and general software engineering techniques.

## What we learned

We learned a lot about the problems of integrations and deploying an application. We also had a lot of fun making this application because we had the motive to contribute to a large number of people in day to day life. Also, we learned about NLP, UI/UX and the importance of having a well-set plan.

## What's next for Noted

In the best-case scenario, we would want to convert this into an open-source startup and help millions of students with their studies. So that they can score good marks in their upcoming examinations.
## Why We Created **Here**

As college students, one question that we catch ourselves asking over and over again is – “Where are you studying today?” One of the most popular ways for students to coordinate is through texting. But messaging people individually can be time consuming and awkward for both the inviter and the invitee—reaching out can be scary, but turning down an invitation can be simply impolite. Similarly, group chats are designed to be a channel of communication, and as a result, a message about studying at a cafe two hours from now could easily be drowned out by other discussions or met with an awkward silence.

Just as Instagram simplified casual photo sharing from tedious group-chatting through stories, we aim to simplify casual event coordination. Imagine being able to efficiently notify anyone from your closest friends to lecture buddies about what you’re doing—on your own schedule.

Fundamentally, **Here** is an app that enables you to quickly notify either custom groups or general lists of friends of where you will be, what you will be doing, and how long you will be there for. These events can be anything from an open-invite work session at Bass Library to a casual dining hall lunch with your philosophy professor. It’s the perfect dynamic social calendar to fit your lifestyle.

Groups are customizable, allowing you to organize your many distinct social groups. These may be your housemates, Friday board-game night group, fellow computer science majors, or even a mixture of them all. Rather than having exclusive group chat plans, **Here** allows for more flexibility to combine your various social spheres, casually and conveniently forming and strengthening connections.

## What it does

**Here** facilitates low-stakes event invites between users who can send their location to specific groups of friends or a general list of everyone they know. Similar to how Instagram lowered the pressure involved in photo sharing, **Here** makes location and event sharing casual and convenient.

## How we built it

UI/UX Design: Developed high fidelity mockups on Figma to follow a minimal and efficient design system. Thought through user flows and spoke with other students to better understand needed functionality.

Frontend: Our app is built on React Native and Expo.

Backend: We created a database schema and set up in Google Firebase. Our backend is built on Express.js.

All team members contributed code!

## Challenges

Our team consists of half first years and half sophomores. Additionally, the majority of us have never developed a mobile app or used these frameworks. As a result, the learning curve was steep, but eventually everyone became comfortable with their specialties and contributed significant work that led to the development of a functional app from scratch.

Our idea also addresses a simple problem which can conversely be one of the most difficult to solve. We needed to spend a significant amount of time understanding why this problem has not been fully addressed with our current technology and how to uniquely position **Here** to have real change.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud of how developed our app is currently, with a fully working database and custom frontend that we saw transformed from just Figma mockups to an interactive app. It was also eye opening to be able to speak with other students about our app and understand what direction this app can go into.

## What we learned

Creating a mobile app from scratch—from designing it to getting it pitch ready in 36 hours—forced all of us to accelerate our coding skills and learn to coordinate together on different parts of the app (whether that is dealing with merge conflicts or creating a system to most efficiently use each other’s strengths).

## What's next for **Here**

One of **Here’s** greatest strengths is the universality of its usage. After helping connect students with students, **Here** can then be turned towards universities to form a direct channel with their students. **Here** can provide educational institutions with the tools to foster intimate relations that spring from small, casual events. In a poll of more than sixty university students across the country, most students rarely checked their campus events pages, instead planning their calendars in accordance with what their friends are up to. With **Here**, universities will be able to more directly plug into those smaller social calendars to generate greater visibility over their own events and curate notifications more effectively for the students they want to target. Looking at the wider timeline, **Here** is perfectly placed at the revival of small-scale interactions after two years of meticulously planned agendas, allowing friends who have not seen each other in a while casually, conveniently reconnect.

The whole team plans to continue to build and develop this app. We have become dedicated to the idea over these last 36 hours and are determined to see just how far we can take **Here**!