230 students.
60 teams.
12 sets, 2 intakes, 2 campuses.
12 faculty members.
5 weeks, 23 working days.
Multiple geolocations.
A gazillion slack and discord messages.
Countless merge conflicts.
Full stack of technologies.
Endless chatlogs.
1 common goal.
The school year for first year Computer Systems Technology (CST) Diploma students wraps up with an intense five-week team project. This year’s theme took on the headline-grabbing technology of the day—Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The faculty team, led by Carly Orr and Chris Thompson, had this statement to project teams:
“After watching the final presentations, three words come to mind:
Compassion—During the design process you dug deep into your hearts to empathize with the world. Each team showed great compassion towards one another, as stress mounted and deadlines were coming at you left, right, and centre.
Creativity—You came up with innovative solutions to problems and niches that may not have even existed in the world a year ago, or even three months ago!
Competence—You have proved yourselves worthy of the BCIT CST reputation of being ‘crunchable’ and hands-on. Go forth now. Continue to be agile, reflective, and resilient developers, capable of solving problems in a complex world.”
Each team’s final presentation included playback of a three-minute YouTube video, and two minutes of live Q and A. Students, faculty, and guests were invited to vote for favourites. Some of the standout projects include:
Most Innovative
- Grand-Prize winner: S.A.M. Stories a Million – Write stories with AI support
- Runner-up: myD&D – AI-generated D&D storylines
Most Useful
Grand-Prize winners (tied):
- Pantrymaster – Recipe recommendation app
- TLDR – Designed to reduce air travel stress due to delays
Best UI/UX Design
- Grand-Prize winner: OrcaSwipe – Discover, host and connect gatherings (app screenshot pictured above)
- Runner-up: BBY-09 Coursla – Find and compare online courses
Best Teamwork
- Grand-Prize winner: OrcaSwipe (again!)
- Runner-up: Barter Better – Cashless local trading app
Student experience
“Working with AI was the most challenging and also most satisfying part of this project,” says team QuickQueue members Aaron Lo, Alex Deschenes, Marco Ho, and Derek Tran. QuickQueue is an app designed to help users on any gaming platform efficiently find their best-matched video games by using filters and AI to provide personalized game recommendations.
“After all the work, the testing, and building in fail safes, it was very satisfying to see our program give very personalized recommendations to the user in a consistent way,” explains Aaron.
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