Welcome Back.
After working through all of the setup and troubleshooting steps last sprint, we were able to hit the ground running for sprint two!
For our second sprint, we had two main priorities. First, we wanted to get the word out about Mathiné by giving presentations to a variety of engineering and computer science courses at UVic. Second, we wanted to implement a long list of features and fixes that those students had suggested.
We successfully expanded user engagement through 11 class presentations and built the Discord community to over 100 members, fostering active participation – a huge milestone that validated the growing excitement around Mathine! To make the community, there was tremendous effort through coordinating the live in-class demos to fielding questions from the students.
To keep that energy going, we took things a step further and hosted our Second Mathiné Hackathon. The event brought together students from across UVic’s engineering and computer science communities to brainstorm, prototype, and build features that would enhance the Mathiné experience. Over the course of the weekend, participants implemented three unique features: tackling key platform areas such as interactive study practice, enhancing the course material scheduler and providing immediate feedback for students overwhelmed in their studies. It was incredible to see how quickly participants were able to understand our vision and contribute ideas that complemented the work we’d already done.
The team also deepened our technical skills, gaining proficiency in the codebase, Git, and Jira, while successfully completing Phase 1 of the project – refinement and information gathering
Beyond the technical outcomes, the hackathon also strengthened our growing community. It was energizing to see students who only recently heard of Mathine become so invested in helping to improve it. The collaborative spirit, creativity, and genuine enthusiasm on display reaffirmed why we started this project in the first place to make academic organization and collaboration easier, smarter, and more human-centred.
Our next big goal is to integrate the hackathon features into Mathine as part of our upcoming sprint. This will be a key milestone in connecting community-driven innovation with our product roadmap. Despite some anticipated challenges related to ensuring UVic privacy compliance for AI model deployment, balancing user engagement with development, and managing workload across team members, we plan to push through these difficulties. Partially by continuing close coordination with UVic Systems – building empathy and understanding through direct conversations. Our plan is to refine each feature, ensure seamless integration with our existing architecture, and polish the UX so that these additions feel like a natural extension of the platform.
With the groundwork from the last sprint now solidly in place, our team feels confident and energized heading into the next phase. Between the growing buzz around Mathine, the incredible input from our users, and the success of our first hackathon, we’re more motivated than ever to keep pushing forward. Now we’re feeling the momentum, and we’re ready to carry it full speed ahead into sprint three and beyond.