Photo: Jay Willett/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Roxbury Community College hosted its first ever hackathon Friday.
The college's Computer Science Club organized the event, which tasked three teams of students to use artificial intelligence to improve online student engagement.
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Dr. Mya Brown, Department Chair of Information Systems Technology at RCC, said students only had a matter of hours to problem solve and present.
"Based on it being history in the making and in closing out Black History Month, [we] are looking forward to actually bringing on more challenging problems in terms of tackling issues that we currently have on campus," Brown told WBZ NewsRadio.
"It’s just a beautiful moment to see how everyone kinda just flourished with ideas, like their mind just started working," said club president Derek Goodwin.
1 of 2 Photo: Jay Willett/WBZ NewsRadio
2 of 2 Photo: Jay Willett/WBZ NewsRadio
One by one, the teams presented their solutions, which ranged from a chatbot named "Roxy" that checks in on students who are not as engaged with RCC's online tools, to a hub organizer that streamlines notifications.
"It really was, like, full on about our problem solving skills," said Sasha, one of the participating students. "We had no prompter, and so we were just like, what would we want to see, like, improved with our system."
Goodwin said the club hopes to one day turn the hackathon into an invitational for other schools.
WBZ's Jay Willett (@JayWillettWBZ) reports.