HoneyDo | Devpost

Landing page
Main product
Pricing plans

Inspiration

Shohruz, the president of Hunter’s first CS Club, created this club to provide introductory-level educational content to all students interested in CS at Hunter College. Sumayia, the secretary of the club, noticed students struggling in their courses on the Discord server and began providing academic sources in the club’s email newsletters. Sumayia also has a younger sister who is currently experiencing the effects of the pandemic on her education. Thus, it propelled the team to develop an educational tool that can hopefully be integrated into classroom environments.

During the pandemic, Ynalois performed poorly in her college-level science classes. She lost the support that teachers offered in person. She searched for it online, in hopes that the internet could replace that connection. That’s when she realized the value of assistance.

What it does

Users are able to enter an academic subject into the input box to generate a practice question based on the subject. If the user requires assistance, they can request a hint. If the user wants the answer, they can prompt the solution by clicking a button. By default, the user only gets a maximum of 5 free tries, and once you run out, you have to purchase the premium plan to unlock access to unlimited tries.

How we built it

We used React for the frontend, Node and Express for our backend, and OpenAI's API to generate the practice questions, hints, and answers.

Challenges we ran into

We wanted to implement Stripe's payment gateway system to collect payments from users for our premium plan. Due to time constraints, we weren't able to implement it.

We also wanted to display all 3 hints in succession after each click, with each hint getting more specific than the previous one. This would help the user gain confidence in their problem-solving skills for that specific subject.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we were able to successfully set up and integrate OpenAI's API as our MVP to generate practice questions, and then after, be able to generate hints and the answer to the AI-generated practice question.

Moreover, we are also proud of deriving a witty compound word for our website: HoneyDo. Honey is a sweet substance and dew is the condensation of rainwater—which induces relaxation. We aim to deliver education in a sweet and condensed manner.

What we learned

Shohruz - I learned how to use OpenAI's chat completion API and furthered my understanding of backend development. Ynalois - I learned backend development for the first time using Node, Express, and OpenAI's API. Sumayia - I learned frontend development and React for the first time to create dynamic components.

In a broader context, the pandemic had detrimental effects on students across the globe. In Boston, "60 percent of students at some high-poverty schools have been identified as at high risk for reading problems— twice the number of students as before the pandemic, according to Tiffany P. Hogan, director of the Speech and Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston." If this disparity persists, "poor readers are more likely to drop out of high school, earn less money as adults and become involved in the criminal justice system." The pandemic didn't solely affect low-income groups, but "children in every demographic group."

Billions of federal stimulus dollars are flowing to districts for tutoring and other support, but their effect may be limited if schools cannot find quality staff members to hire. This is where AI comes into play! Our educational tool implements AI to assist students on any subject of their choosing with an option of receiving 3 hints.