Delta

The inspiration for the project was the growing “university lag” — the gap between the rapid pace of the technology industry and traditional curriculum. Many students graduate with a degree but lack the specific, modern skills required for current roles. By analysing the gap between SFU’s courses and current industry demands, the project lets students take control of their own preparation.

We were inspired by the SFU courses API and wanted to find a way to use it in our project. We were also unsure how to plan future courses against job hunting, so we built a dashboard that surfaces which skills are in demand and which courses offer them — blending function and a quiet interface.

Delta is a career-readiness dashboard that helps students bridge the gap between their academic studies and the technology industry. Users select a career path and compare industry requirements across years — specifically, the shift into 2026.

By cross-referencing those professional demands with SFU’s course database, the tool performs an automated gap analysis: which skills are covered, which require independent study. It ends with a quantitative readiness score and direct links to the official documentation for the missing skills.

Hand-written HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no framework, no build step. The core logic is a small engine that processes JSON datasets for years of job requirements and university course descriptions, with a readiness scoring algorithm at the heart of it.

We implemented fuzzy string matching to connect industry terms with academic course titles so minor naming differences didn’t produce false gaps. The interface uses custom CSS to create a calm, dashboard-like environment with progress bars and clear data cards for comparison.

Three-person team (Justin Tan, Vincent Zhao, me). I built the frontend and the scoring engine in vanilla JS — parsing two static JSON files (industry requirements + SFU course descriptions), running fuzzy string matching to link skill names to course titles, and rendering the readiness score and gap list in the DOM. Teammates handled data collection and the Devpost write-up.

Justin Tan · William Huang · Vincent Zhao