Local Students Can Buy Notes For College Classes
BOSTON (CBS) - Can't get out of bed after that big frat party last night? Now, if students miss a class, they can just buy the notes from the lecture on the Internet.
Saif Altimimi and Ali-Reza Asarizadeh are college students from Canada who were in Boston this week pushing the new website called NoteWagon.com.
"You have peers in your class who can teach content really really well, so the question is, how do you…connect those peers to other people who need their help? That's what we created, an academic tool where students are sharing."
WBZ-TV's Christina Hager reports.
But critics say NoteWagon is more like a crutch for slacker college kids. "I don't have a problem with students sharing," says Boston University Professor Tobe Berkovitz. "I do object to students making money on this sort of thing."
"It takes away from the learning experience," says Emerson Professor David Gerzof, who teaches classes in social media. "There's something about you yourself writing down what the professor is talking about and what the class is discussing, that helps you internalize and memorize."
NoteWagon's creators say there's value in collaborative learning. They're also appealing to money-strapped students with the opportunity to earn cash selling notes. "One student made $498.00 last year in only a month-and-a-half," says Altimimi.
Thousands of Canadian college students are already registered with NoteWagon, and now its creators are opening it up to the U.S. It's currently available at Boston University, Northeastern University, and Tufts. Its creators say they plan to bring it to M.I.T., Harvard, and U. Mass next.
