SwapScholar

SwapScholar is a student-to-student skill exchange platform designed for university communities, built to address a simple but common problem: students often have valuable skills to offer, yet have no easy way to find peers who have what they need in return. Rather than relying on paid tutoring or scattered group chats, SwapScholar creates a structured space where a student who can teach Python programming, for example, can find another student who is offering Photoshop or graphic design help, and the two can arrange a fair, direct exchange of knowledge.

At its core, the platform will allow students to create profiles, list the skills they can teach, and list the skills they want to learn. A browsing and search system will help students discover relevant matches across the community, while an exchange request system allows two students to agree on a swap. After an exchange, ratings and reviews will build trust, while a future time-credit system will let students earn credits by teaching and spend them learning from different peers, removing the need for a two-person match.

For this proposal stage, the focus is on planning and architecture rather than a fully working build. The intended deployment environment is a Microsoft Azure Ubuntu virtual machine, served through an Apache web server, with a Python Flask backend handling application logic, a lightweight SQLite database for storing user and skill data, an HTML/CSS frontend for the user interface, and HTTPS enabled to keep all student data and communication secure. This proposal, and the server it runs on, will remain live in the cloud for the duration of grading. Additional safeguards will include password hashing, input validation, restricted firewall rules and regular database backups, supporting responsible handling of student information while demonstrating practical Linux administration, application deployment and cloud security skills in real environments.