Discover CS
The purpose of this project is to help give underclassman and people with little or no knowledge of Computer Science a way to discover the different aspects of Computer Science and the vast amount of fields that someone with a Computer Science degree can take. This is done via a big information dump for the user to read and explore the various fields and skills required to become successful.
A user can be in one of three camps: they either have no interest in Computer Science, but are curious on how Computer Science can relate to their respective field, or they are an undergraduate freshman/sophomore majoring in Computer Science and are interested in what fields are open to them, or they are an undergraduate junor/senior who is curious to finding out what field they can realistcally get into with the current skills that they have. These people are our core audience and the application is to soley provide information that caters to either of the three use cases.
For the first camp, we have information regarding the various fields in which Computer Science is used to help the overarching field. Like how biologists use machine learning to help understand how viruses are spread throughout the body and how an immune system reacts to the specific virus, or how Big Data is exponentially speeding up human genome sequencing. These users will be able to see their specific field and the underlying Computer Science subjects and can be pointed to certain skills that can help advance their personal careers. Like how a junior geneticist can learn Python to help their lab sequence an animal’s genome. That geneticist can then be promoted because of the Python skills that he/she has picked up, advancing their career.
For people in the second camp, from experience, many undergraduates in Computer Science and Engineering drop out for one of three factors: 1) they realize that they are not as skilled enough to make it through the degree without spending thousands upon thousands of dollars, 2) They are not fit for a job they really hate with subject material they don’t understand for the big bucks, or 3) they do not see the potential in the degree and drop out. We are targeting groups 1 and 3 (People in Group 2 should probably reevaluate themselves/go see a pyschologists). The site has a feature where users can look to see what skills are nessecary for a particular field, like for Web Developement, a successful web developer would be able to code in JavaScript and be familiar with the React library.
Lastly, for people in the thrid camp; there may come a time where you are far into a degree and realize that your resume is not on the competetive threshold that companies are willing to even look at. This group of upperclassmen are now frantically trying to upgrade their applications. As a data aggragate, these uses would then look at the list of opportunities avaliable to them from our application. This allows them to “gte their game up” and find opportunities for them to help themselves and possibly the community.
This project gives the people a tool to fully understand the breadth of Computer Science and gives certain individuals the capacity to help their careers.