UWC Team Wins Big at Standard Bank Unihack 2024 Competition
Team Edu Elevators, composed of computer science students Andile Masela, Michael Maseko, Olerato Motaung, and Nkuleko Nhlapo, finished first.
Team EduDevs, including Zaakirah Waggie, Thandeka Ngwenya, Mujtabaa Suliman and Hasan Haswary came third with their Enrollify application.
In the second place was team Health Guardians, whose membership was made up of UWC students Emerald Adams and Uzoma Chukwuka, together with Mnelisi Mabuza and Phemelo Maile from the University of Cape Town.
In its second year of running, UniHack saw students from the four universities in the Western Cape participate in a two-day hackathon in early July.
In addition to networking with industry experts and potential employers, the students participated in coding sessions and competed against each other in a solution development competition.
They tackled the challenge of developing a functional application under Smart City Innovations, Health Care Innovation, Environmental Sustainability, Education For All and FinTech Solutions.
As such, Edu Elevators participated in the Education for All category and designed a customised AI chatbot that offers a tailored learning journey, reflecting students’ achievements across different activities.
This chatbot operates on WhatsApp and aims to monitor students’ academic progress both inside and outside the classroom by incorporating the SA SAMS into the AI framework.
“We aim to integrate with the South African basic education system to access student performance data from the South African School Administration Management System (SAMS),” explains EduElevators’ Masela on his LinkedIn page.
“The platform adjusts the difficulty of tasks based on the student’s performance, ensuring a tailored learning experience. By integrating SAMS data with our platform-generated data, we can gain detailed insights into student performance in the classroom and recommend the best learning enhancement strategies”.
Masela added that participating in the event is also good to include when applying for graduate programmes, and that further engagements with Standard Bank are scheduled for next month.
Enrollify is focused on Education For All. Among its features, Enrollify simplifies student registration from primary school through University, establishes an academic portfolio that enhances student applications and career prospects, and assists institutions and bursaries in identifying eligible candidates. It uses Microsoft Power Apps and leverages Microsoft’s cloud-based technologies.
Team Health Guardians entered in the healthcare category and their solution is designed to offer digital access to healthcare services at minimal or no cost, encouraging healthy behaviours while optimising healthcare provider workflows. By leveraging machine learning, the team developed classification and predictive models to enhance patient diagnosis and care.
According to Waggie, their triumph in the competition is a big deal. “Winning third place at the Standard Bank Unihack with Enrollify is a significant milestone that validates our skills and opens doors for career opportunities while enhancing the reputation of the University of the Western Cape,” she said.
“It elevated our potential to seek out jobs based on success. Based on the field of cloud and IoT, it indicates to recruiters of different companies that we have the potential and skill to be a part of their organisation. This achievement also showcases the University’s support for innovation and inspires other students.”