UpGrade

Upload Resource Page
Login Page
Create Listing
Tutor Page
Sign Up Form
Tutor Profile - Reviews
Resource Page
Tutor Profile - Availability
Tutor Profile
Resource Download Page
Homepage/Listing Page

Inspiration

Many university students grew up with tuition as a key source of academic support—helping them through primary, secondary, and JC education. But when they enter university, that support system suddenly disappears. The subjects become more unconventional and specialized, yet there’s a noticeable lack of accessible tutoring or help. This leaves many students struggling more than ever, despite having excelled with help throughout their earlier education.

At the same time, many of our peer,especially those in SMU teach tuition at the primary, secondary, or JC level. While this provides income, it often feels misaligned with the advanced knowledge and niche expertise they've developed in university.

That’s where UpGrade comes in. We believe that university students should be able to support one another, whether as tutors or tutees. This is based on real, lived experience with the exact modules and content they’re facing. It’s peer-powered learning that makes higher education a little more human.

What it does

UpGrade is a platform designed to connect students with peer tutors and quality study notes. On our marketplace, you can find tutors for a specific course that you need help in. Additionally You can also discover a wide range of high-quality study notes. This website breaches the gap between tutors and tutees, where tutors/tutees can sign up an account and create a listing to sell/seek for a tutoring service. Additionally, we have built in review functions to give feedback to the tutors for greater user experience in choosing tutor.

How we built it

We used Chat and Build to create a strong foundation for the platform. From there, we continued to improve on it by connecting the front end to a back end, which is also connected to a Postgres database, Supabase. We utilised Firebase, Superbase, TypeScript, NextJS, React, Flask, Tailwind CSS while this web app is hosted on AWS

Challenges we ran into

The base ground of front end that chat and build created was catered for a full user experience, which could be difficult for backend coding and quickly became too ambitious for a one and a half day hackathon. We realised it was difficult to implement all the relevant features within the time limit and had to make prioritisation on the important features.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite being a team of students with limited experience in full-stack development, we successfully built a functional platform that integrates both frontend and backend services. We’re proud of overcoming technical hurdles such as connecting Firebase Google Login, integrating Supabase as our backend database, and deploying our project on AWS. Additionally, we managed to customize and extend a pre-built frontend from Chat and Build to suit our unique idea within a very short timeframe. Most importantly, we’re proud that UpGrade has the potential to meaningfully support fellow students who struggle with unconventional modules

What we learned

Being new to most of these languages, we gained experience having to incorporate new languages and styles to create a fully functioning application.

Throughout this hackathon, we gained hands-on experience with full-stack development and the integration of various technologies. We deepened our understanding of frameworks like React and Next.js, and learned how to connect frontend interfaces to backend services using Supabase. Implementing Firebase authentication taught us how to securely manage user logins, while working with a cloud platform likeAWS gave us insight into deploying and hosting real-world applications.

What's next for UpGrade

The next step for UpGrade is to implement a chat feature. This chat feature will enable bookings to stay within the application to reduce unwarranted risk and improve user experience.