Casha

Casha was built for a Canadian teacher and marketing professional who saw a clear gap in the tutoring market: students struggled to find qualified subject-specific teachers, and the few platforms that existed were either too generic or too expensive to get started on.

The vision was a focused platform where students could search for teachers by subject, book sessions directly, and attend classes online without switching between disconnected tools. Everything in one place: discovery, scheduling, and the virtual classroom itself.

Cenciss handled the full engagement, from UI/UX design through MERN stack development and Jitsi Meet integration.

The matching system had to go beyond a basic search bar. Students needed to find teachers by subject matter, qualifications, and availability. A query that returned irrelevant results would break trust immediately. The filtering logic had to surface genuinely relevant matches without requiring students to scroll through pages of profiles.

Scheduling is deceptively complex in a two-sided marketplace. Teachers needed to set their own availability in a way that was easy to manage. Students needed to see those slots and book without confusion about time zones or double-booking. The system had to stay synchronized across both sides.

The virtual classroom was the hardest technical problem. No off-the-shelf video conferencing API was available within the project constraints. A custom solution was required, but building video conferencing from scratch was not feasible. The team needed to find and adapt an existing open-source solution that could be integrated cleanly into the platform.

The "Join Class" flow required time-aware logic. The classroom should not be accessible until the scheduled session time arrived. Activating access too early or too late would undermine the scheduling system and frustrate both teachers and students.

The MERN stack provided the foundation: React.js on the front end for a dynamic, responsive interface, Node.js and Express.js for API and back-end logic, and MongoDB for storing user data, teacher profiles, availability records, and session information.

The search and filtering system was built around subject-based querying, with teacher profiles structured to surface qualifications and availability clearly. Students could filter results and view profiles before booking, keeping the discovery experience relevant.

The scheduling module let teachers define their available time slots through a calendar interface. Students saw those slots in real time and could book directly, with the database preventing double-bookings and keeping both sides updated.

For the virtual classroom, Jitsi Meet was selected as the open-source video conferencing platform. It provided robust audio and video functionality without requiring a proprietary API, and its open architecture allowed for interface customization to match the platform's design. The "Join Class" button was built with time-aware activation logic, becoming available only when the scheduled session window opened, preventing early access while ensuring no delay for students at the start of their class.