Word Salad Flashcard App

CSPB 3308 Project for Team 0

Team Name:

Word Salad

Team Members:

• Thomas Lees, ThomasJHLees
• Janet Matthews-Derrico, j-derrico
• Atreyu Sutton, asutton01
• Tyler Kinkade, tyknkd

Weekly Meeting:

Mondays, 18:00 MDT, Zoom

Vision Statement:

Create a web-based dynamic flashcard study app which implements a spaced-repetition algorithm to review user-input content

Motivation:

Traditional blocked learning (i.e., "cramming") is inefficient compared to spaced interleaved learning (Dunlosky et al., 2013; Kornell & Bjork, 2008; Mondria & Mondria-De Vries, 1994), but very few flashcard apps incorporate spaced-repetition with user content. Therefore, we want to create an easy-to-use app to enable users to study the content they want to study efficiently using spaced-repetition.

Risks to Completion:

• New languages/working environment (e.g., HTML, CSS, SQL, JavaScript, Flask, Heroku)
• No prior experience working with team members
• No experience implementing web-based app with user input
• No experience implementing spaced-repetition algorithms
• Scope of project (could fail to deliver working project due to high number of desired features)

Mitigation Strategies:

• Take advantage of documentation--while the languages and working environments are new to us, they aren't new, and there is extensive documentation and online resources available
• Close communication via multiple channels (Email, Google Chat, Zoom, Google Docs, GitHub Projects)
• Weekly meetings to check in, discuss challenges/obstacles, and make sure everyone is on track
• Take advantage of team member knowledge on spaced-repetition, research available open source spaced-repetition platforms
• Focus first and foremost on minimum viable product, then prioritize additional desired, but not required features. This will ensure ability to deliver a functional project on deadline

Minimum Viable Product:

• Website interface with a premade English-English vocabulary flashcard set and no user tracking

Product Stretch Goals:

1. Methods for adding flashcards from the website interface
2. Categorization of flash cards and ability to organize by category from the website
3. A flashcard "deck" concept to organize cards
4. User accounts
5. Saving decks to user profiles
6. Public and Private card decks
7. Searching

Development Method:

We plan to use an Agile framework and borrow pieces of several development idealogies to complete our project.

For our meeting schedule we will largely borrow what Scrum recommends, but condensed into a single weekly meeting. We wil give updates about what we've worked on, what we're going to work on and any blockers that may be in place (standup), host a retrospective of our last sprint period, and complete any required sprint planning. Unfortunately, a daily standup and additional scrum meetings do not make the most sense in a classroom environment.

For our planning and prioritization pieces, we will be using more of a Kanban model. We will define user stories, and organize them in a prioritized backlog. New stories will only be pulled into the board to be worked on when the current work has been completed (within reason). We will also adopt some lean principles in planning where we will only be creating new stories slightly before they are needed instead of trying to map out our entire process. Because of our inexperience in developing programs it makes sense to leave planning to the latest possible second so that we have opportunities to learn pieces that we did not know that we did not know.

The following is a summarized list of the practices we hope to implement on our team:

Agile

• Scrum
  • Practices - combined into a single weekly meeting
    • Release planning
    • Sprint planning
    • Sprint review
    • Sprint retrospective
  • Deliverables
    • Product backlog
    • Sprint backlog
    • Burndown charts
    • Shippable functionality
• Extreme Programming
  • Team-wide coding standard
  • Collective team ownership
  • Continuous integration via GitHub
  • Test-driven development
  • Simple design/code
  • Small, frequent releases
  • Sustainable work pace
  • Whole team understands whole project
• Kanban - with our GitHub project board
  • Visualize workflow
  • Limit work in progress
• Agile Modeling
  • Requirements envisioning
  • Implement in priority order
  • Unified information source (GitHub)
  • Document late as possible
  • Just barely good enough artifacts

(Adapted from Ambler & Holitza, 2012)

Project Tracking Software:

GitHub Projects

Directory Tree

This project has the following directory tree:

.  
├── wordsalad/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── db.py
│   ├── schema.sql
│   ├── auth.py
│   ├── home.py
│   ├── decks.py
│   ├── cards.py
│   ├── templates/
│   │   ├── base.html
│   │   ├── index.html
│   │   ├── about.html
│   │   ├── decks/
│   │   │   ├── index.html
│   │   │   ├── create.html
│   │   │   ├── edit.html
│   │   │   └── cards/
|   │   │       ├── index.html
|   │   │       ├── add.html
│   |   │       └── edit.html
│   │   └── auth/
│   │       ├── login.html
│   │       └── register.html
│   ├── static/
│   |   ├── style.css
│   |   ├── js/
|   │   |   └── cards.js
|   │   └── images/
|   │       ├── logo.jpg
|   │       ├── salad.png
|   │       ├── GRE.png
|   │       ├── LSAT.png
|   │       └── SAT.png
├── instance/  
│   └── wordsalad.sqlite  
├── tests/  
│   ├── data.sql  
│   ├── conftest.py  
│   ├── setup.cfg  
│   ├── test_factory.py  
│   ├── test_db.py  
│   ├── test_auth.py  
│   ├── test_home.py  
│   ├── test_decks.py  
│   └── test_cards.py  
├── .docs/
|   ├── _build/
|   |   ├── doctrees/
|   |   └── html/
|   ├── Makefile
|   ├── README.md
|   ├── conf.py
|   ├── index.rst
│   └── make.bat
├── csv/
|   ├── source_info.csv
|   ├── SAT_vocab.csv
|   ├── GRE_vocab.csv
│   └── LSAT_vocab.csv
├── images/  
│   ├── db_schematic.png  
│   ├── kanban/  
│   │    └── kanban20220*.png
│   └── mockups/  
│        ├── about.png
│        ├── createcard.png
│        ├── decks.png
│        ├── flashcard.png
│        ├── home.png
│        ├── homepage.jpg
│        └── login.png
├── Procfile 
├── requirements.txt 
├── run.py 
├── setup.py 
├── MANIFEST.in 
├── README.md 
├── WEEKLY_STATUS.md 
├── PAGE_TESTING.md 
├── SQL_TESTING.md 
└── FINAL_REPORT.md 

File	Description
wordsalad/	Application directory
__init__.py	Flask application factory
db.py	Database initialization script
schema.sql	SQL database schema
auth.py	Blueprint to handle authorization requests
home.py	Blueprint to handle home/about page requests
decks.py	Blueprint to handle view/add/edit/delete deck requests
cards.py	Blueprint to handle view/add/edit/delete card requests
templates/	Web app templates directory
base.html	Base web app page template
index.html	Main web app page
about.html	About web app page
decks/	Web app flashcard decks directory
index.html	Web app flashcard decks main page
create.html	Web app page to add new deck
edit.html	Web app page to edit existing deck
cards/	Web app flashcard deck directory
index.html	Web app flashcard deck cards page
add.html	Web app page to add flashcards to deck (incl. via CSV)
edit.html	Web app page to edit flashcard in deck
auth/	Web app user authentication directory
login.html	Web app user authentication login page
register.html	Web app user registration page
static/	Web app static files directory
style.css	Cascading style sheet
js/	JavaScript directory
cards.js	Card flipping JavaScript
images/	Web app images directory
*.png	Web app images files
instance/	Database directory
wordsalad.sqlite	SQLite sample database for Heroku deployment
tests/	Unit tests directory
data.sql	Unit test SQL data
conftest.py	Unit test configuration script (runs for every test)
setup.cfg	Unit test setup configuration file
test_factory.py	App factory unit tests
test_db.py	Database unit tests
test_auth.py	Authentication unit tests
test_home.py	Home page unit tests
test_decks.py	Decks pages unit tests
test_cards.py	Cards pages unit tests
.docs/	Autodocumenter directory
_build/	Build files directory
doctrees/	Document trees directory
html/	HTML files directory
Makefile	Make file
README.md	Instructions for installing autodocumenter
conf.py	Configuration script
index.rst	Documentation index page
make.bat	Make batch file
csv/	Flashcard CSV files directory
source_info.csv	Source data information
SAT_vocab.csv	SAT vocabulary source data
GRE_vocab.csv	GRE vocabulary source data
LSAT_vocab.csv	LSAT vocabulary source data
images/	Documentation images directory
db_schematic.png	Database schematic diagram
kanban/	Kanban screenshots directory
kanban2022*.png	Weekly Kanban screenshots
mockups/	Web page mockup directory
*.png	Web page mockups
Procfile	Heroku procfile
requirements.txt	Dependencies for deploying to Heroku
run.py	Script for Heroku deployment
setup.py	Script to install app
MANIFEST.in	List of other files to include at installation
README.md	Summary of project
WEEKLY_STATUS.md	Summary of weekly meeting, progress, tasks
PAGE_TESTING.md	Summary of web pages, testing to implement
SQL_TESTING.md	Summary of database schema, methods, testing
FINAL_REPORT.md	Final project report

References:

Ambler, S. W., & Holitza, M. (2012). Agile for dummies, IBM limited edition. Wiley.

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2008). Learning concepts and categories: Is spacing the “enemy of induction”? Psychological Science, 19(6), 585-592. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02127.x

Mondria, J-A., & Mondria-De Vries, S. (1994). Efficiently memorizing words with the help of word cards and “hand computer”: Theory and applications. System, 22(1), 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/0346-251X(94)90039-6