EduLive

Enabling bright, talented students to help their classmates in need and get paid to do it.

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Inspiration

We've all been there before. Exam time is around the corner, and things are hard. You've been juggling so many classes, that some haven't gotten the attention they need. You go in to office hours and reviews, but the TAs are swamped with hundreds of other students. They can't give you the help you desperately need. That's where EduLive comes in.

What it does

EduLive allows the top performers in a class to hold special paid review sessions online through a livestream for the people in their class. Take things at a pace appropriate for the class, whether it be covering the whole curriculum in a matter of 1 day or 3. Our livestream hosts are specially vetted to ensure that they're the top 5% of their class grades and are ready for your every question. The streaming set up is extremely simple, requiring only OBS to start delivering a reliable stream of crystal clear video.

How we built it

The site was built using:

  • JavaScript
  • Next.JS & React
  • Google Firebase (Firestore, Storage, Realtime)
  • TailwindCSS

It was built to be iterated upon with great speed, having an average turn around time for new features to be less than an hour.

Challenges we ran into

Originally, our stack involved a separate local service for relaying real-time updates like chat messages and file uploads, however configuring the CORS rules proved to be very difficult. However, to our rescue came Google Firebase, which offered real-time observation services for its noSQL databases, allowing us to skip implementing a relay system all together.

We were also originally going to use PostgreSQL for our database, until we realized that if we wanted to iterate fast, we needed to use unstructured, malleable data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

On the frontend: We are especially proud of our working video livestreaming components that provide a seamless, rich experience for the students using the platform. We also had a great time working on file uploading, an important feature that enables live hosts to share files (practice questions, mock quizzes, and more) with viewers.

On the backend: We are very pleased with how seamless and frictionless the OAuth experience we've been able to deliver has been due to Google Firebase and their amazing SDKs.

What we learned

We learned many, many quirks of Next.JS and React, improving all of our web development skills as we tackled each issue head on. We also learned quite a lot about how to choose the right database solution depending on what the needs of the product may be. Overall, those of us that were comfortable with frontend were given a chance to familiarize ourselves with backend code, and vice-versa.

What's next for EduLive

After HackPrinceton, EduLive is going to undergo further development until is ready to be released as a fully-fledged service with actual payment handling, question banks, quizlet integrations, and much more.

Discord contacts: n1co#3727

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