Connectd

Menu screen
Chatbot

Inspiration

Inspired by our problem when asking about information from student services in our university. We want to improve the service quality as well as response times for information about enrollment, timetable, and course information to university students in Australia. We also want a platform where university students can connect with each other and share their experience as well as network to get career advantage.

What it does

We have two features: AI Chatbot that can answer student queries, as well as a student forum for all students in Australia. The AI Chatbot has fast response times and also provides accurate response to student queries. The forum is designed to be similar to Reddit.

How we built it

We built the frontend using Expo, a React-native framework. The generative AI is built using llama-index for the Chatbot that we trained. Back-end is built using Python and FastAPI.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a lot of challenges such as time management, productivity issues as well as getting stuck hundreds of times. We also come across schedule limitations. But we managed to get through this challenge and created something out of our limited time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Very productive for a small team with a limited time. We managed to create a MVP that we can pitch just in time.

What we learned

We learned that naming is extremely important to avoid confusion in projects down the road. We also learn a lot about teamwork, collaboration as well as time-management under tight deadline

What's next for Connectd

We will partner with Monash, UniMelb, and RMIT should this project be successful. We will streamline the student connect / student services experience across all universities in Australia, starting from Melbourne.