Two NC State students have developed an app called Homework Homie that encourages productivity in academic settings by automatically organizing student’s homework assignments for them.
Co-founders Sam Weaver and Meg Grant developed their idea for Homework Homie after having to use multiple different academic websites for their classes and struggling to keep track of their homework assignments.
Meg Grant, a second-year studying business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship, explained why she wanted to start Homework Homie.
“We really approached it because it was something we knew we would find useful,” Grant said. It was basically like ‘how can we solve this problem ourselves but also help a lot of other people,’ so being closely related to the issue was a good part of it as well.”
Homework Homie automatically tracks your assignments as you browse supported sites such as Moodle or WebAssign. Once Homework Homie finds these assignments, they are saved in the Homework Homie menu in the computer’s browser and are synced to the cloud. It also sends users email notifications for assignments.
Sam Weaver, a second-year studying computer science, described his goals for Homework Homie and the impact he hopes to bring to students on campus.
“It’s really important for us to help students,” Weaver said. “It’s incredibly stressful to be a student, and it’s difficult to balance a million things. If we aren’t building technology that helps with that, we are building technology that hurts that. We have the responsibility as students and entrepreneurs to take the chance and to actually build something that is good for the world.”
Grant and Weaver started developing their app with a basic program they shared with their friends and professors. After receiving feedback, they made adjustments to Homework Homie to better help users.
The duo also has goals of expanding their app to other schools as well as developing a new program to help students register for classes by reading about collected information on professors.
“We would love to expand what we have right now to other schools,” Weaver said. “We’re actually exploring some new ideas. One of them is in the works and is not publically released yet, but you can expect to hear about it soon, it’s called ‘Syllabus+.’ We collect data on all of the professors at a school and sell that information back to students to help them make better informed decisions.”
As young entrepreneurs, the biggest struggle Grant and Weaver have experienced deals with balancing their schoolwork, family responsibilities and working to improve Homework Homie.
For students who believe they have a great idea for a business, Grant suggests reaching out to all professors of entrepreneurship at NC State.
“We have incredible resources for students that not everyone knows about and looking into them and reaching out to professors and other students helps because they are there to help you,” Grant said. “For me, finding the community of entrepreneurship kids and professors has been so helpful… find that community and understand that all your ideas are valid.”
Those who are interested in learning more and downloading Homework Homie should visit the Homework Homie website.
