Quizmefy: A Fun and Educational Quiz Platform

Use Case Title:

Personalized, gamified quiz generation powered by AI

Description:

Quizmefy empowers users to generate personalized quizzes based on their preferred topics. The platform offers two exciting game modes: Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) and Open-Ended. You can also upload custom pdf documents to the AI for it to ingest your custom context to generate questions.

Tutorial for Use and Best Practices:

Getting Started Navigate to the hosted web application here Log in or sign up for an account if you have not done so You are then able to see a beautiful and intuitive user interface to get started using the platform.
Quiz Click on the ‘Quiz me!’ card on the dashboard. Enter any topic that you want to be quizzed on. It could be any obscure topic. E.g. ‘Pokemon Evolution’, ‘History of Bluetooth Speakers’.
Pick the amount of questions that you want to be generated, for a quick response from the AI, try to pick a number below 10.
Pick either multiple choice or open ended Note: sometimes the AI times out, so you might have to try generating the quiz again. It will usually work on the second try. This is a technical issue with our deployment strategy, which we aim to improve if we obtain the funding from this hackathon!
Begin! Start answering the quiz! If you pick open ended, the answers are matched by semantic similarity to the actual answer.
Results: Once you complete the quiz, you will be brought to the statistics page where you are able to see how you did. You will also be able to see the answers to the questions that you have gotten wrong. This allows you to learn from your mistakes and improve over time!
Dashboard: In the dashboard, you are able to see a public word cloud of quizzes that other users have generated!
If you click on any of the topics, you will be brought to the quiz page for that specific topic You are also able to see a history of quizzes that you have played, so that you can review your past quizzes and revise

Impacts on Learning:

Positive Impacts: The AI tool used in Quizmify really steps up the learning game. Here's how it makes learning better:

Personalized Quizzes: You can create quizzes on topics you're actually interested in. It's like choosing the adventure, so you're more motivated to dive deep into a subject.
PDF-based Quizzes: Uploading your own study materials to generate quizzes is a game-changer. It's perfect for revising your class notes. You get to test your understanding of your actual study material, making it easier to grasp those concepts.

Limitations and Ethical Considerations:

Limitations: As cool as Quizmify is, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution:

AI-Generated Questions: Sometimes, the AI may not hit the mark with its questions. They might not be as precise or relevant as ones made by human experts. So, you might not always get the most accurate questions and answers.
Not for High-Stakes Tests: If you're prepping for a major exam, Quizmify might not be the best choice. When the questions need to be super accurate, like in standardized tests, AI-generated quizzes might not cut it.
Subject Matters: Some subjects need that human touch – especially those where you need creativity or deep understanding. AI-generated questions might fall short in such cases. For those subjects, it's better to stick to traditional methods. In a nutshell, Quizmify's AI tool is awesome, but it's not a silver bullet for all situations. It's a great addition to your learning toolkit, but not a replacement for everything. Use it wisely, especially when you want to make learning more engaging and customized.

Inspiration

The inspiration behind Quizmefy was to create an engaging and informative platform that allows students to enhance their learning experience on the go. We recognized the need for a quiz application that could offer a wide range of topics, including obscure subjects often overlooked in online quizzes. To achieve this, we leveraged the power of AI to generate customized questions for any subject in the world.

What it does

Quizmefy empowers users to generate personalized quizzes based on their preferred topics. The platform offers two exciting game modes: Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) and Open-Ended. You can also upload custom pdf documents to the AI for it to ingest your custom context to generate questions.

Additionally, Quizmefy enables users to challenge their friends in thrilling multiplayer battles, fostering a competitive and collaborative learning environment.

How we built it

Quizmefy is built on the robust foundation of a microservice architecture. The frontend of the application is developed using NextJS and is hosted on the Vercel cloud platform. We implemented two additional microservices - a Flask AI backend for question generation and a WebSocket Express server. These microservices are hosted on our own AWS EC2 instance, ensuring scalability and seamless performance.

To achieve sophisticated question generation, we harnessed the power of OpenAI's gpt3.5-turbo LLM model within the Flask server.

Challenges we ran into

During the development process, we encountered challenges with the GPT model's JSON output. Often, the model would produce invalid JSON, containing erroneous characters or trailing commas. This caused our application to crash when attempting to parse the output.

To overcome this obstacle, we discovered a valuable solution in the form of an 'AutoGPT' correction library. This ingenious tool allowed us to communicate the desired shape of the JSON output to GPT. It then iteratively corrected any errors by parsing the output as JSON, refining it until it met our specifications. This breakthrough enabled us to obtain flawless question outputs that we could manipulate effectively.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the most significant achievements in Quizmefy is the creation of a visually appealing and user-friendly interface. Thanks to the efforts of our teammate, KingFish, we were able to design a beautiful and accessible UI using TailwindCSS and ShadCN, a customizable component library.

Seeing the application bring real value to our friends and witnessing the dynamic questions generated by the AI further validated our pride in this project. The positive feedback and engagement from users motivated us to keep refining and enhancing Quizmefy.

What we learned

Quizmefy provided us with invaluable experience in implementing a full stack application using the microservice architecture. Breaking down the various components into separate microservices allowed for better maintainability and smoother collaboration among the team members.

Throughout the development process, we also gained insights into proper CI/CD procedures to ensure continuous and seamless deployment of our services. This knowledge proved essential in maintaining a stable and up-to-date application.

What's next for Quizmefy

Looking ahead, our vision for Quizmefy includes expanding the multiplayer mode with more exciting game modes to keep users engaged and entertained. Additionally, we plan to introduce a variety of question formats, further enriching the user experience.

In the future, we aim to incorporate a feature that allows users to upload their own documents, such as PDFs or slides. The AI would then process and create quizzes based on the uploaded content, catering to students who wish to revise and test their knowledge on their academic materials. This enhancement will make the study process more enjoyable and effective for users.