Goal: Create a platform for high school students to post their solutions to math textbook questions or challenging math problems and have other students provide feedback and comment on them
Our project is a website that allows high school students to improve their mathematical communication skills.
- Post their detailed solutions to textbook questions or problem solving questions for peers to comment on
- Provide helpful feedback and ask questions about other students' solutions
- Gain access to quizzes, articles and other learning resources posted by other students to practice technical math skills alongside communication skills
- Rate other students' comments to encourage constructive, critical feedback to each other's solutions
- Rate other student's solutions and see how well-communicated others find their solutions
It is easy for students to become so focused on finding the right answer to a math problem that they completely neglect the presentation of solution. Oftentimes, an elegantly communicated solution is just as, if not more, important than the final answer.
To encourage the clear communication of students' problem solving process, PEER PROOF's learning platform puts an emphasis on the clarity, concision, and elegance of written solutions. It does this through a student-teach-student learning model. Receiving and providing good criticism teaches students on both sides how they can improve the way they write their solutions to problems.
The benefit of a student-based learning system is that students can point out each other's mistakes while reflecting on how those same mistakes appear in their own work. Sometimes seeing the parts of your solution where other students get confused helps you to understand where you may have made mistakes.
To encourage healthy discussion and respectful criticism, students can rate the quality of comments on a "5-Star" scale. Top rated comments will appear at the top of discussions for the students to read and reflect upon. Solutions can also be rated on the "5-Star" scale so that student's can reflect on how well-communicated others find their solutions.
A variety of other studying tools, including a quiz section and a Pomodoro timer, are included on the website to provide students with a one-stop experience for all their studying needs. We hope to foster an ideal learning environment for students to study efficiently while learning from each other.
PEER PROOF facilitates group discussion between students, providing a platform for students to make mistakes and learn from them together.
Located on the home page are links to our different webpages. Click the icons to go to specific webpages. Click "LET'S GO TO MY PROFILE" to access you're profile page. On the bottom, you can find the git hub account of the website if you would like to view the source code.
On your profile page, you can view your bio, see your recently completed quizzes, recent posts, and recent comments. This will allow you to keep track of your recent activity and gain easily access to discussion you are currently involved in. Various links on this page will bring you to the other web pages (i.e. Explore page, Quiz section & Proofreading page)
Top posted problems and their top rated solutions are displayed here. Users can view the problems that have the highest overall activity (most posted comments and solutions) as well as the most recent posts for problems- located on the side. You can view the topic of each post through its tags (ex. "Algebra", "Trigonometry", "Coordinate Geometry", etc.). In addition, links to a variety of math-related articles, discussions, and learning resources can be explored through this page.
You can post a problem and your solution for it (adding the appropriate topic tags to identify the content of the discussion) or post your solution to an already posted problem. Your solutions don't have to be complete. Sometimes, showing what you've got so far and getting feedback on it can help guide you in the right direction!
Comment helpful feedback to posted solutions and quote specific sections that you are referring to. Rate "5 stars" to comments that you find constructive or useful and they'll show up closer to the top. You can also rate other students' solutions using the "5 star" scale.
Similar posts are linked on the side of the page.
Quizzes for a variety of mathematical subtopics are available on this page. Click the links to be brought to quiz sites that will test your knowledge of those topics and help you study. The button "ASK YOUR DOUBTS" will take you to the Proofreading Page, in case you would like to discuss your solutions to the quiz problems.
Students learn best when they are given ample time in between study session to relax and subconsciously process the information. Our built-in Pomodoro Timer will help keep track of how long you've been studying for and remind you when it's time to take a break.
This was the first hackathon for all our group members. Picking a project that was both within our coding capabilities as well as ambitious and innovative was a difficult first step. Another big obstacle for this project was the fact that our team members lived in completely different time zones. Our international team often struggled to schedule meetings and keep everyone up to date on the plan. However, our biggest challenge was trying to take our great ideas and actually code it. Most team members weren't strong in JavaScript, so we had to devotes our efforts towards what we were strong in, and that was front end-development.
Our team is most proud that despite not having all the skills necessary to implement every aspect of our idea, we still managed to code a stunning website that is visually appealing to users, easy to navigate and overall very clean. We created an inviting atmosphere on our website, which will encourage students to discuss their solutions, study efficiently and learn from each other on this platform. We are proud to have successfully integrated learning tools like proofreading, quizzing, and a Pomodoro timer in a beautifully designed website. Planning out the layout and front-end design of the website was an essential first step for this project as this will encourage users to practice their communication skills alongside other aspects of a standard studying routine through its integration on our website.
This hackathon introduced our team to the nuances of designing a big project. The excitement of brainstorming initial ideas, the challenge of implementing these ideas in practice, and the rewarding feeling when the project comes together at the end. We had fun exploring the flexibility of web-design and the plethora of functions that a single website could perform. Furthermore, it was a pleasant experience to see the universality of people's passion for programming. It was inspiring to see how we overcame international and online barriers to create this amazing project!
Next steps will naturally involve exploring the backend programming of this project and adding more JavaScript so that the website can function how we originally planned. New features would include creating a database to store user's post and responses, adding features that will allow users to type in their posts and profile information, and possibly allowing users to create an account using their google account.
Currently, this platform has focused its scope on mathematics; however, the same system can encourage strong communication skills in other subjects as well, like English, history, and science. More advanced features could include providing an easy way for users to add mathematical symbols and notations when typing out their solutions and adding pictures or screenshots of their work in their posts.
HTML, CSS, SCSS, JS
- ImgBot :
Used to automatically optimize images on our website (using these compression algorithms: ImageMagick, Svgo and MozJpeg) while keep their quality and dimensions intact - HTML5 UP! : Makes spiffy HTML5 site templates (built on Intelligent HTML5 and CSS), which are fully responsive, super customizable, and 100% free under Creative Commons We have used its txt templates for many of our web pages