Undergraduate and graduate students produced a web platform for North Carolina A&T's CASE Lab during a November competition in Greensboro, N.C.
The community-focused technology event featured students from North Carolina universities, who had less than 24 hours to code real-world application solutions to issues presented by education-based nonprofit organizations in Greensboro and Guilford County.
Elon student participants included Emma Kwiatkowski, a senior cinema & TV arts and computer science double major; Jensen Roll, a junior independent major and Leadership Fellow; and Brittany Washington ’13, an Interactive Media master’s student.
Elon’s team built a platform for North Carolina A&T’s CASE Lab, a grant-funded STEM program that teaches skills for scientific inquiry to minority students and students enrolled at select middle schools in Guilford County. The program seeks to improve competency and stimulate interest in pursuing science-related careers. It features four components: a Girls in Science Lab, a Girls in Science Weekend Academy, a Boys in Science Lab and an Environmental Sustainability Camp.
The winning solution, built by Elon students, featured a platform serving all constituents of the CASE program’s web audience: parents seeking information about the CASE Lab program, teachers wishing to engage in an online forum to share lesson plans and classroom activities, and students hoping to experiment in an online virtual lab.
The virtual lab experience was built based on client-supplied videos of the Daphnia crustacean’s heartbeat under various narcotic stimuli. The platform was built for desktop browsers and featured a fully mobile-ready website using responsive web design practices.
The Elon team tied for first with a team of computer science students from Appalachian State University. The third place team featured two computer science students from Wake Forest University and a student from Ragsdale High School.
The first-place teams took home $4,000 per team to be split evenly between participants. Information Technology professionals from Lincoln Financial served as the judges for the event.
William Moner, an instructor in the School of Communications, served as the team’s faculty mentor. Calvin Williams, Lincoln Financial project manager and director of Digital Business Technology and Enterprise IT Services, served as the team’s coach and mentor during the competition.