The problem:

Student Engagement: Teachers today have an impossible problem: keeping students engaged while preparing them adequately for common core standardized testing. 

Traditional "edutainment" games (Reader Rabbit, Carmen Sandiego, et. al.) are usually solo endeavors and teach only what the software has programmed. We wanted a system that: 

• Allowed the whole class to get involved
• Allowed the teacher to specify or amend curriculum. 

Our Solution:

DigiQuiz: A mobile-enabled, real-time question-and-answer platform that keeps students engaged in class through interactive educational gameplay.

How it works:

Teachers login to the dashboard where they can create, amend, or play "decks"

How it works:

When teacher launches a game , he/she is given a 4-character room code that he/she shares with the class. 

How it works:

Students enter that code on their mobile devices. No download is needed, only an internet connection. 

Students can buzz in to answer, and the teacher knows who buzzed first.

They can also give real-time feedback to the teacher who sees it on the teacher view. The teacher can then see if more review on the subject is needed.

The Tech Stack:

• Database: MongoDB
  • While our data was highly relational, the flexibility of MongoDB allowed us to rapidly iterate and develop new features. 
• ​Routing: Express.js
  • ​Express.js fit well for both our RESTful database API calls and serving up views. 
• ​Websockets: Socket.IO
  • ​​We used standard jQuery AJAX/API calls to the database but for actually serving that data in real time to a specific subset of users, Socket.IO was the most powerful and flexible solution we found.
• ​​View: React.js
  • ​​Because we envisioned this as something students would use on mobile devices (with limited bandwidth requirements) we wanted to use a VirtualDOM system to cut down on the rendering overhead on older mobile devices. 

Square Pegs

(from left to right)
Peter Do - Full Stack Developer

Juan Sierra, Scrum Master

Brian Boyko, Project Owner

View this Slide Deck:

http://slides.com/brianboyko/digiquiz

View our live demo:

http://dgqwz.herokuapp.com

View our GitHub:

https://github.com/squarepegs/MKS21-thesis