UptownFunc
Introduction
Our project sponsors, Katie Tanigawa and Tom Nienhuis, are Camosun College English instructors whose passion for teaching and improving their students' learning experience has left them wanting more from existing EdTech tools. They have partnered with UptownFunc, a team of highly skilled and motivated developers consisting of Shay Sin, Dongjin Li (Lexie), and Michael Grant, to deliver an EdTech game platform that puts the educator and student experience first. UptownFunc is developing Humdingers, an interactive quiz game web application. On Humdingers, educators can create and manage customized quizzes that are based on their course materials. They can then launch those quizzes and host real-time games that their students can easily connect to and engage with. While commercial EdTech platforms like Kahoot are increasingly popular, educators raise important concerns. Things like prohibitive subscription fees, unapproved analysis of intellectual property and results data, and limited game settings may deter some educators or damage their trust in the platform. Humdingers solves these challenges by keeping quiz data secured on Canadian soil, ensuring results data is transient by deleting it after quiz conclusion, and giving educators the flexibility to tweak game settings such as scoring style, timers, and leaderboards so that they can best fit their students' needs
Acknowledgements
UptownFunc would like to thank our project sponsors, Katie Tanigawa and Tom Nienhuis, for allowing us to collaborate on such a well-structured, meaningful, and fun project. This project has been a fantastic opportunity to both showcase and sharpen our web development skills, and also support other students' college experience. Additionally, we would like to thank the entire Computer Science faculty for sharing their knowledge over the past 2 years, and extend a special thanks to our technical advisor, Jana Behfarshad, whose guidance has supported us every step of the way.
Team Members
Michael Grant
(Full-Stack Developer)Michael is a highly adaptable student software developer and collaborator with a lifelong love for technology. He enjoys learning and working with new languages and technologies, and constantly honing his craft. His experience with coursework and self-driven projects allows him to effectively convert requirements into well-designed and functional systems with code that is both efficient and readable, supporting long-term maintainability. Through his contributions on the Humdingers project, Michael has leveraged and strengthened his expertise by developing the REST API quiz management layer and the scaled real-time gameplay orchestration.
Dongjin Li (Lexie)
(Full-Stack Developer)Lexie enjoys solving complex problems by breaking them down into manageable steps. Throughout the ICS program, she has developed strong analytical thinking and systematic debugging skills while gaining experience in full-stack software development. On the Humdingers Capstone project, she contributed to the backend by designing the database architecture, implementing authentication and authorization, and developing the post-game performance summary feature. With over ten years of experience in education, she values collaboration, clear communication, and creating intuitive software that genuinely supports teachers, students, and other end users.
Shay Sin
(Full-Stack Developer)Shay is an adaptable, curious, and reliable developer with a passion for creating user-friendly web applications. Although she had no programming experience before starting college, she embraced the challenge of entering a new field. Through the program, she has developed practical skills in frontend development, problem-solving, and teamwork while working with a variety of programming languages and technologies. Shay has a strong interest in React, Swift, and full-stack development and is committed to continuously expanding her technical skills.