Kerala students' modern virtual classroom for millennials wins $10,000 in CODE19 online hackathon

Abhinand C and Shilpa Rajeev, second-year Computer Science students from the Government College of Engineering in Kannur have bagged the first prize of $10,000 at the recently concluded CODE19 online hackathon.

Their winning entry, iClassroom, involved a modern virtual classroom for the millennial generation. It connects students with teachers through a social media-type interface for uninterrupted learning in the time of the pandemic.

The 72-hour online hackathon was hosted by the US-based Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation. It saw thousands of innovators and developers from India and abroad competing online from the comfort of their homes to create open-source solutions to help fight the coronavirus crisis.

"Our winning entry was a virtual classroom that makes learning easier and more intuitive by providing an engaging peer-to-peer social media-type platform," said 19-year-old Abhinand. "iClassroom enables students and teachers to interact with each other, clear doubts, mentor others and conduct online classes. It serves as a tool for enhanced learning within and outside physical classrooms."

Shilpa Rajeev, 20, said they built the platform as a practical solution for all learning communities to interact with each other, share resources and keep track of progress in chosen courses, rather than use multiple communication tools for this purpose. "We now intend to enhance iClassroom's functionality by integrating several useful apps," she said.

CODE19 had three leading academic institutions as partners — National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad), IIT Kharagpur and Centre for Entrepreneurship, Ashoka University. The second prize of $ 5,000 was claimed by six students of Manipal Institute of Technology for enabling remote diagnosis of Covid-19 patients to reduce the risk of infection for healthcare workers. Their solution, TeleVital, captures a patient's vital statistics remotely through a webcam and browser. The third position was divided into three categories, with each of the three winning teams awarded $ 3,000 as prize money. In addition, 10 best innovative solutions were awarded $ 1,000 each at the hackathon.

Meanwhile, Asha Jadeja Motwani, founder of the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation, said: "We were overwhelmed by the high quality of entries received and the deep enthusiasm shown by participants. A community of hackers and mentors, especially young students from all parts of the country, came together to enable India's fight against coronavirus. I believe the qualitative, open-source projects created at this hackathon would help mitigate the impending corona-inflicted challenges in India."

CODE19 was organised by the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation in collaboration with partners such as TIE Mumbai, IAMAI Startup Foundation, Mumbai Angels Network, Association of Designers of India, Stumagz and GirlScript.