uoCourses is a course recommendation system designed to help University of Ottawa students discover the most relevant courses tailored to their interests, career goals, or academic preferences.
Try it out here! https://uocourses.onrender.com/
- Course Search: Find courses by describing your career goals, academic interests, or specific subjects (e.g., "I want to improve at data structures," "How do I become a doctor?" or "I want skills to become a CEO").
- AI-Powered Responses: Recommendations are presented using Gemini AI.
- Comprehensive Course Data: Pulls detailed information on course codes, titles, descriptions, and prerequisites from the uoapi.
- User-Friendly API: Simple /chat endpoint to interact with the system.
- Input Query: Users describe their interests or goals (e.g., "I want to study robotics").
- Smart Filtering: The system uses a score-based algorithm to match courses:
- Assigns higher scores to subject code matches
- Prioritizes keywords in course titles over descriptions
- Considers course level preferences (beginner, advanced, graduate)
- AI Enhancement: Top-ranked courses are sent to Gemini AI for natural language recommendations
- Response Validation: System verifies AI output contains valid course codes and falls back to simple listing if needed
- Backend Framework: Flask (Python)
- AI Integration: Google Gemini 2.0 Flash API
- Data Source: uoapi by uScheduleMe https://github.com/uScheduleMe/uoapi
- Frontend: React
- Caching: Custom LRU cache implementation for optimal performance
- Cross-Origin Support: Flask-CORS for seamless frontend integration
- Preloaded Course Data: All course information loaded into memory at startup for zero-latency access
- Score-Based Ranking: Sophisticated filtering system that ranks courses by relevance before AI processing
- Temperature-Optimized AI: Lower temperature (0.3) for consistent and accurate recommendations
- Health Monitoring: /health endpoint for system status checks
This project uses uoapi by uScheduleMe, which is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 (LGPL-3.0). See the COPYING and COPYING.LESSER files for the exact terms of the license.
Made with ❤️ for uOttawa students