Online study sites gain users, critics
Forget the pricey tutor. Online study sites are becoming the cheaper, more popular alternative.
Cramster, Sparknotes and Course Hero provide study guides, Power Points by topic, novel summaries and other study aids. They’re growing in popularity, though many Syracuse University professors wish students would avoid them altogether.
Cramster has 500,000 users, double what it had a year ago, and Course Hero’s collection of documents, homework, class notes and graded essays uploaded by users is up to two million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
‘Online study sites are hardly ‘study sites,” said Bruce Smith, an SU English professor. ‘They are dumbed-down solutions and answers to questions.’
SU’s academic integrity policy does not specifically mention study sites as a source for plagiarism, but many professors feel that self-declared study sites are not what their names imply.
Donald Siegel, an SU earth science professor, said the sites make for lazier students.
‘Imagine you were on the football team,’ he said. ‘How do you do well and get to play? You work your ass off, figuring out how to do better and get stronger with a combination of inconvenience, sweat and brains. The same applies for anything students do in academics. There are no short cuts to do well.’
The sites claim they exist for students’ benefit. Cramster’s Web site, under the ‘What Educators Should Know’ tab, says that 92 percent of users maintain or raise their grades.
‘We just want to provide the same type of benefits that you would get in a physical study group, except online,’ said Rob Angarita, co-creator of Cramster. ‘We’re really there to create the largest study community of students, educators and subject enthusiasts.’
Angarita said these ‘subject enthusiasts’ are usually gifted students, former professors or professionals in an area of study.
Students on Cramster can post questions on message boards, where subject enthusiasts reply with their answers. Angarita said that there are cracks in the system. Anyone at least 13 years of age can sign up to be an enthusiast on the site, leaving opportunities for faulty information.
SU chemistry professor Mark Braiman said that he posts notes, old tests and answer keys on Blackboard. He said he liked that the access to content on Blackboard is restricted to Syracuse students and faculty.
‘If you let your course materials onto a site like Cramster, you cannot rely on them being protected in the future from misuse, or from being sold,’ he said.
Students at SU said that online study sites had more use in their high school classes than they do now.
‘I used Sparknotes in high school, but not so much in college,’ said Heather Mitchell, a senior inclusive elementary education and history major. ‘In college I feel like they give you more resources than they did in high school.’
The online study sites have expanded from the traditional sites for literature, such as Sparknotes and Cliff Notes, to covering several subjects ranging from engineering to business. Cramster has question and answer boards for 35 different subjects.
‘For most of my courses, I want to have students using Internet resources to help them answer problems,’ Braiman said. ‘Where I draw the line is where the students are not engaging the material cognitively or engaging the material psychologically.’
Angarita agreed that if someone really wanted to abuse the content, they could. Ultimately, he said, Cramster could be abused like any other resource.
The kind of work sharing that happens on online study sites can happen in the classroom, too, Angarita added.
‘Are they really studying, or are they just getting something for homework? With Cramster, we do more about how we take our content and organize it and do it in a way where students can get a learning benefit from it,’ he said.
Students said that the sites can be helpful as a last resort, but it’s easier and safer to simply ask for help from your professor or attend their office hours.
‘What you’re doing on the site you could be doing during office hours with the professor,’ said senior business major Alistair Ellis. ‘So why not get face value? Because at the end of the semester, when a professor is giving you an A or a B, if they recognize you and they know you, chances are they’ll give you a better grade.’
Published on September 13, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Contact Lorne: lefulton@syr.edu
