MCIT Virtual Campus

Backstory

Earlier this year, a teammate organized “virtual study rooms” where a few students met up regularly on zoom, stayed on mute, then did some focus work for a few hours. It really helped us with getting work done and made us feel less lonely in an online program.

Inspiration

The primary idea of this project came from Gather Town, a web app used by MCIT on-campus during COVID lock-down. We wanted to recreate that virtual experience for MCIT online student (to the best of our ability).

What it does

MCIT Virtual Campus allows students to chat and meet in the "social" lobby, or they can enter a quite study session in the "focus" zone. As an add-on component, the MCIT Notice Board allow students to arrange meeting requests (e.g. mock-interview, leetcode session).

How we built it

We build our front-end components using JavaScript/Bootstrap/React. We implemented most of our back-end related functionalities using Firebase. Also our authentication and hosting are done via Firebase.

Challenges we ran into

Doing web development is difficult! Especially none of our members have production-grade development experience. Implementing every single feature is a challenge for us, including real-time messaging, authentication, hooking our app to a database, and deployment.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

When Jane came up with this idea at first, it seems so complicated and farfetched to us. It's amazing how we actually implemented all the features(in their bare-bone level) and made this project a reality.

What we learned

Divide up workload beforehand is essential for efficient production. Also communication is key while everyone is working on their bit!

What's next for MCIT Virtual Campus

Map and elements design overhaul.
Integrating a tree app where students have to study for an uninterrupted period of time for their tree to grow. And students can share their forest with friends.
Adding mini-games that encourage interactions

The End

We hope you enjoyed this demo, and hope you give it a try! Please please please leave feedback on our devpost comments to let us know how we can improve and if you would love this to be an official “ virtual campus” for our MCIT online program!