Study Plus

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  Reminder page lets you set up your reminder.

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  Taskbar lets you easily switch between the different pages.

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  Study time page lets you start a stopwatch and time your study time each day.

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  Study page lets you study your core class by providing different resources.

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  Home screen can be used to view notes, search core classes, or go to settings page.

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  Working on the code

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  Editing the video

How did your team demonstrate and utilize diversity and inclusivity (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, neurodiversity, age, culture, language, subject area of expertise) to develop your app?

Our team's mission was to prioritize diversity when creating Study Plus and include resources for people of all ages and academic levels. One way we demonstrated this was providing study material for a large variety of courses ranging from middle school all the way to college level, allowing anyone to benefit from the study resources feature.

How will each of you use what you have learned to assist in your professional development for future jobs or careers? What transferable skills have you gained?

The communication skills we developed from this project will help us in every aspect of life in the future. We have also learned how to manage time and work between a team of people, and plan for long term projects.

What were the greatest strengths and weaknesses displayed in your group? Name and describe at least one for each. How did you overcome them?

All of us had our own very different strengths and weaknesses. Our biggest weakness as a group would have to be the incompatibility between our schedules, it was often very difficult to find days and timings to arrange in person meetings that would work for all of us. To combat this we met at school, during lunch when all of us were free. We also struggled with MIT App Inventor itself in the beginning. All of us were beginners with the software and we quickly figured out each of our natural abilities which caused us to divide the workload in the way that we did and help each other out with issues that came up in the process. One of our biggest strengths throughout this project was how compatible we were as a group. We got into disagreements in the beginning stages but they were easily resolved. None of our meetings felt uncomfortable or awkward. Communication or conflict resolution was rarely a problem in our group.

Inspiration

When we were originally brainstorming for ideas we were having a hard time meeting due to each of our members having to finish last minute assignments and being busy with other things for school. When we finally got around to meeting the problem was obvious. An app to help with procrastination and studying.

What it does

Study Plus helps students to set up reminders through the app and be notified when they need to finish their assignments. Study Plus provides a range of middle-school through high-school course materials that could help the student study with just a tap of a button. Our app lets the students track their study time by using the study time feature that allows the student to set up a stopwatch on their screen and be unable to use any other application on their phone while studying, then they would be able to save their time and see their improvements for five days. Study Plus also has a bonus feature that allows students to create notes in the app and view it later through the home page and my notes page.

How we built it

Study Plus was built using the MIT App Inventor platform. Study Pluss’ main components were built and implemented using an internal database (TinyDB) which saves various app data in the user’s phone.

Challenges we ran into

When programming Study Plus there were a few issues that we ran into. One of our main challenges was deciding whether to use a cloud server based database which would let us create an authorization page for the user. This way they could sign up for an account and still be able to access their saved data even on a different device. But after careful consideration our team decided to not implement this feature as it would create a more complex system and make the experience less user friendly. It also wasn’t needed as a user's data can be saved in their device.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud that we can provide students with an opportunity to improve their productivity and develop good habits. Creating this app has been an amazing journey for our beginner team as we explored different ways and techniques to develop the app while collaborating every step of the way, and helping each other out.

What we learned

In terms of technical skills we learned an immense amount about MIT App Inventor, block coding, graphic design and video editing. Besides learning a new platform we have also learned to communicate more effectively as a team and share our ideas and knowledge every step of the way. As well as learning how to more effectively manage our time and complete long term projects like Study Plus. We’ve also learned more about each other's work styles and how we fit together!

What's next for Study Plus

Our most clear goal as of right now is to expand on the app by adding passwords and an account system. We would also like to add more study material. As a long term goal we would like to have a feature where users can turn their study material into games and other activities to make revising easier and more entertaining. One of the most important updates to Study Plus will be a tutoring service where volunteers can apply to be a tutor or apply for tutoring through the app and help or receive help from people in their community. Although this will be a big step, we are hopeful that this feature will assist many students in overcoming their procrastination, and improving their academic knowledge.

Built With

• mit-app-inventor
• tiny-db