Wow! Time has completely flown by and I am now finishing up Week 8 in Capstone. Not only is this nearing the close of the course, but it’s also the close of my time at OSU. I want to hit a quick recap on my team’s project followed by a really quick recap of OSU.
My team’s project is almost complete, at least the minimum viable product (MVP) that meets all user requirements. The final user requirement being implemented this week is the algorithm that ‘grades’ a language learner’s answer against the answer submitted by the content provider. Another teammate worked on the code for the algorithm and it basically uses FuzzyWuzzy, a Python library, which is based on Levenshtein distance. Levenshtein distance is a method to measure the distance between two strings.
So, to summarize what my team was able to accomplish this quarter. We built a mobile app using Expo and React Native. Only 1 out of 4 of us had previous experience building mobile apps, and 1 member had never worked with React. We were able to implement the ability for a registered user to record and store audio files in Google Firebase and allow other users to playback these audio files in the app. Most of the group members, including me, had no previous experience with Firebase or making Firebase queries. We successfully implemented Google’s Speech-to-Text API to convert recorded audio to text. No one in our group had previous experience using this API. Lastly, after this week we will have implemented the ability to score a user’s answer against a stored answer. This was a learning experience for all of us and I think we succeeded.
Lastly, to summarize my time at OSU. It took me exactly two years to complete the program and I still can’t believe how much I’ve grown and learned. I came in with absolutely no programming or computer science experience. I was able to not only build projects to display on my resume, but I was also able to land a summer internship that extended into the school year and ultimately will convert to full-time employment.
Even though this program was fully online, I have enjoyed interacting with the OSU post-bacc community. There are so many involved students, professors, TAs, and alumni that I never felt ‘alone’. This program is certainly what you make of it so, it’s likely not for everyone. However, I would certainly recommend this to anyone interested in computer science and looking to change their career.
