Crunch - A conversation with the App's Student Development Team
Channel: Center for Online Innovation in Learning
Date: 2016-02-16

As part of this year’s fall HackPSU event, the Penn State EdTech Network and COIL co-sponsored an educational technology (EdTech) themed challenge in which participants were asked to think of a problem that they faced as a student in higher education and design a technology-based solution to solve that problem. The winning team, composed of three students from Penn State Berks, addressed their frustrations with finding just-in-time peer assistance for their more challenging courses, developing what they describe as a “Tinder for tutors”.

The previously named Studee app, now called Crunch, was developed to make finding a tutor or study partner easier across the University’s broad range of courses and has been designed to create a Tinder-like network to connect students studying similar subjects. The creators felt that one of the hardest challenges a student regularly faces is to find help in certain classes and subjects that campus resources do not currently cover. The team of creators hopes that the Crunch app will fill that void by connecting users with potential collaborators based on their areas of expertise or specific help requested.

During this COIL Conversation, the Crunch team describes the challenge they currently face in finding peer tutors, details the process for designing their solution at HackPSU, provides a walkthrough of the Crunch app, and engages participants in a discussion of the potential for developing the app as a resource for all Penn State students.

The Crunch team consists of Penn State Berks students Caleb Kitchen, a sophomore security and risk analysis major; Tyler Moser, a sophomore computer science major; and Venu Mulane, a junior information sciences and technology major.

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