Written by: Mir Mustaufiq Rahman
Edited by: Wong "Louie" Yi Shon
The first week of the semester is always a nightmare for every student. Stumbling around campus to find the classrooms you’re assigned to is sure to give anyone a headache. The interconnectedness of the academic buildings makes it tougher for students, with many confusing the library as a gateway to D Building, where most language courses are held.
Given this context, Meheraz Ahmed Tiash, a 7th-semester APM student from Bangladesh, created ClassDoko, a platform akin to Bus Doko—the preferred web app for APU students navigating Oita Kotsu buses in Beppu.
Just like its name suggests, ClassDoko aims to help APU students find the right classrooms for their registered courses. All they have to do is input the course’s name or professor’s name in the search bar of Class Doko, and the details for that specific course will pop up, including different classrooms, course instructors, and most importantly, the classroom number! The website also has a Japanese version for Japanese students too. However, Tiash believes that the Japanese version still needs a lot of tweaking and refinement before the final release.
When asked how he came up with such an innovative idea, Tiash stated that the idea to create Class Doko popped up during a brainstorming session with his Bangladeshi friend Iftikhar Mahmud, a Software Engineering student at IIUC, Chittagong, Bangladesh. Together, they created the overall framework for the website. Tiash expressed that tech has always interested him, especially programming new applications and fixing electronic devices, and mentions that most of his brainstormed ideas come when he is either fixing laptops for his friends in Beppu or engaging in daily conversations with his friends in the classroom.
ClassDoko has already been submitted for Project B in the student office. If ClassDoko wins the proposal for Project B, Tiash aims to use Project B’s funding for further refinement and feature development of the website and make it into a companion LMS service for students.
The Student Office has so far been positive about the idea, and Tiash expects to get the funding through Project B by the end of this year for ClassDoko.
When discussing his future plans for ClassDoko, Tiash outlined his intentions to make the platform as simple and user-friendly as possible.
"I believe tackling such a significant project solo presents its challenges. My current aim with Class Doko is to streamline it to the point where, upon my graduation, it becomes user-friendly and accessible for my juniors to manage, even those with zero tech background.”
To that end, Tiash has already established ClassDoko as a registered organization at APU. The circle is currently looking for members for the product development team and public relations departments, so please contact Tiash on Instagram if you are interested in joining! Tiash’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tiash420/
APU currently offers about 3000 classes. To avoid unexpected crashes, ClassDoko will display information cards for current and upcoming classes within 40 minutes of their start times. Initial plans called for a 20-minute window, but user data revealed that most students checked 30 minutes in advance. Interestingly, three weeks into this semester, Tiash discovered that students began checking within 40 minutes, prompting the final adjustment for the upcoming class information to be displayed 40 minutes before those classes begin.
One of the notable upcoming features of Class Doko is the integration of teachers' and Teaching Assistants' email addresses into the platform. This integration will function similarly to a hyperlink, allowing users to click on an email address and be directed to Outlook's send email page, which will already have the recipient's address filled in. Each semester, the teachers' email addresses will be updated using APU’s database, while the status of Teaching Assistants will be verified. If a student notifies the system via the website that they are the TA for a specific course in the upcoming semester, their information will be cross-checked against the current APU database. Once verified, the TA's email address will be added to the database. Tiash also intends to add map and route features to ClassDoko, which will show travel time and travel distance from the fountain.
ClassDoko is still in its soft-launch stage, and Tiash and his team are working diligently every day to gather the necessary user data to make ClassDoko more user-friendly and refined. Tiash requests that more students at APU begin using ClassDoko so that he can collect more user behavior data needed for this purpose.
All in all, as someone who often has a hard time navigating through the corridors of APU, ClassDoko can be highly beneficial, both for students and professors alike!
Class-Doko link for those interested in checking out the page- https://classdoko.com/
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