In today’s digital age, online platforms are a primary source of knowledge exchange and social interactions. However, the quality of interactions can vary widely and not all contributions are constructive and conducive to a productive discourse. Constructive feedback is crucial as it fosters learning, promotes understanding, and encourages a respectful exchange of ideas. Prior work has focused on classifying constructiveness of user comments on news websites, however is not transferable to social media websites since news websites are heavily moderated. In response, in this paper, we developed a model trained on reddit comments capable of effectively discerning the quality and constructiveness of a user's comments in an unfiltered environment. This model can be deployed on social media websites as a black box feature to filter out non-constructive comments that lack substance to encourage more insightful discussions and promote more meaningful exchanges. Our novel approach leverages Large Language Models to auto annotate constructiveness and then build a task-specific model that learns to detect constructiveness of comments based on a taxonomy of carefully engineered features. We were able to achieve X% accuracy with the X classifier. 

Team TechTribe identified a prevalent challenge among the blind and low vision community; navigating cluttered websites. Thus, we’ve developed a transformative solution using GenAI. Our browser extension: ClearView Assist enhances web accessibility by decluttering interfaces. By leveraging voice commands, users can articulate their browsing objectives, prompting ClearView Assist to dynamically filter out irrelevant page elements while highlighting content crucial to the user's input. This significantly reduces the time and effort required by screen readers to locate specific details and exemplifies a proactive approach to inclusive design, promoting digital equity and empowering individuals with diverse visual needs with efficient web navigation.

When grieving it can be difficult to find the time and energy to find resources on grief. The Grievers Library has an EZ Reads section thats purpose is to provide easily accessible quick reads on many types of grief. The goal of our project was to find excerpts for underrepresented categories in EZ Reads. We hope that through this project we can help those going through the grieving process find resources more easily. Grief is something that everyone will experience at least once in their lifetime. It’s inescapable and it’s important to create access to resources that can help.

The Indigenous residents of the Colville Reservation confront a growing digital divide, hindering centralized information dissemination. While a Facebook group and email reach the reservation’s 9,000+ residents, residents express dissatisfaction with the current decentralized system. Our project tackles this divide by developing a user-friendly mobile application which serves as a centralized platform for reservation-wide resources and announcements, including connecting residents with internet accessibility programs and community engagement features. This project seeks to empower the Colville Tribes through improved communication and community engagement.

ConnectOne is an application that helps first-generation iSchool students overcome their lack of information by giving them all they need to know about their school environment. ConnectOne grants students access to necessary school information and upcoming events as well as providing them a place to organize their hectic college schedules. Our project yielded significant results, with students reporting that ConnectOne not only increases their confidence but also their academic success. By bridging the gap between information and accessibility, ConnectOne makes sure that first-generation students feel supported throughout their educational paths starting from day one.

Contigo Chatbot is a lightweight web service that provides legal and social service recommendations to unaccompanied alien children in the U.S. In collaboration with Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), this WhatsApp-integrated chatbot serves 18-24 year-old clients in Maryland. Emphasizing informal, spontaneous conversations, the chatbot focuses on improving literacy of immigration steps and supports life transitions through contextual recommendations. Utilizing ChatGPT 4.0, Contigo can communicate in multiple languages and is centered around serving non-English resources to KIND’s Clients. Contigo amplifies KIND's efforts to provide resources to vulnerable populations at low cost and high utility.

Country Bookshelf, Montana’s largest independent bookstore, is located in the growing metropolis of Bozeman and for over 65 years has been a literary destination for locals and travelers alike. Country Bookshelf engages with its community in various ways, including book fairs with local schools. Before this project, Country Bookshelf had little in terms of concrete procedures and tools that could be referenced when hosting a book fair. The creation of a book fair handbook aims to build upon the successful book fair program that Country Bookshelf has been able to implement and guarantee continued opportunities for students, librarians, and booksellers.

The HEAL-WA team aims to increase the use of their portal by clinical care providers, meeting their mission to “provide evidence-based information to support patient care.” I created a Care Provider Toolkit to increase access to databases and journals useful to clinicians. The toolkit's clear and easy-to-use design encourages the use of these resources. With reliable access to evidence-based information clinical care providers can provide quality care to patients. Providing evidence-based resources at no additional cost creates options for healthcare workers who may otherwise be limited in their ability to use these resources due to the high cost of access.

Digital Public Library of America, a repository with ~50 million digital items, is no longer creating educational resources out of its items. OER Commons is an open-source platform for creating and promoting educational resources. We aimed to migrate DPLA content to OER Commons. We determined that OER Commons is a usable alternative for DPLA resource sets. Issues such as copyright, link rot, and different organizational structures make the migration more difficult. However, the value of the DPLA items remains and they can be better accessed when uploaded to OER Commons.

As the University of Colorado Boulder Police Department (CUPD) prepared to recognize its seventy-five years of service, the CUPD Legacy Project was organized to facilitate the creation of a formalized collection of memorabilia and the processes necessary to maintain the collection. Additionally, to both honor their accomplishments and preserve their knowledge, past and present CUPD members were invited to participate in the creation of an oral history collection. The establishment of the CUPD Legacy Collection will facilitate access to and preservation of department history and encourage past and present members to share their knowledge through stories.