Why make it?

In order to graduate from Old Dominion University, Computer Science majors are required to take CS410 and CS411 classes. In these classes the goal is to create a programmatic solution to a current problem. Our solution, Innovation Portal, set out to solve the problem of communication, collaboration, and publication of projects created by ODU students.

What does it do?

The main attraction of the project is the Display case, this is where we show off the student submitted projects. Each project in the display has a thumbnail, title, description, and tags. The idea was to keep everything short but give enough information that the User could quickly decide if they want to read more on the project page. The solution solves collaboration by allowing any registered User to request to join any active project, the current members of a project could also submit a "Help Wanted" post and describe what they're looking for. Finally, the communication gets solved by implementing a few APIs, every project that gets created gets it's own shared Google Drive, Slack Channel, Git Repository, and the ability to easily create a Google Hangout.