Inspiration
The idea behind this project lies in a simple problem - the appeal of tutoring. Throughout the world, students tutor in order to get some extra cash. However, we find that these teachers often lose motivation, as they have to focus on more important things such as college applications. In turn, students lose their tutors and perform worse in their classes as well. And so the problem arose, how do we make tutoring lucrative, regarding colleges and portfolio building?
What it does
Our solution to this problem lies in community service hours. By allowing tutors to create and share videos - according to their own schedules - we reward them for their contributions by giving them community service hours based on how much they post, how long the videos are, and how many people they reach. By implementing a search algorithm and filters, we can create a nuanced selection of videos for students, allowing them to learn for free.
Challenges we ran into
This process posed many challenges that we overcame in these 24 hours. Firstly, during the UI design process, we had a problem when trying to convert our design to code. We tried multiple sites and plugins, but none of those solutions preserved the initial design. Instead, we took the Figma file and built around the design - using and learning HTML and CSS in the process. Regarding the back end of our project, we ran into some issues of converting our python, which was in multiple files into javascript, which we realized would be most efficient in one file. This caused issues of disorganization in our code, which was caused by having multiple classes under one file. We overcame this challenge by adding comments to ensure we know what the selected code’s function is. Another challenge we faced was creating thumbnails for our videos. To complete this task, we selected a random frame of our video to be presented as the thumbnail.
How we built it
Regarding the UI/UX development, we created the platform by using Figma, and then converting the design into HTML and CSS for our frontend platform. In terms of the scripts, we originally started by implementing Python to make User and Video classes, which allow us store specific attributes to our video and user objects. After successfully viewing the success of the logic of our code, we converted our python into javascript. The reason we made the switch was that we realized the importance of having fluency in our code’s implementation. Using the syntax, we were able to easily implement our code’s logic and processes into the backbone of our front end, which is coded in HTML. </p> <h2 id="whats-next-for-studytube">What's next for StudyTube</h2> <p>We have a few ideas for the future. Firstly, we want to partner with larger companies and organizations such as AP CollageBoard, Khan Academy, and other YouTube content creators, expanding our database and allowing students to have a centralized platform for all their academic needs. We also want to implement practice problems into our videos, making them more interactive - similar to edpuzzle. Lastly, adding a option to submit notes or study guides in PDF form is also a simple option we can add to the website, giving more versatility for tutors. </p>
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.