New Web site pays students for notes and tutoring
College students nationwide now have a new resource for tutoring and class notes with the Web site Schoology.com .
Created by four students at the University of Washington at St. Louis, Schoology.com allows students to upload and download class notes. The site also offers tutoring services and assistance from their peers on various subjects.
The Web site’s Facebook group said the goal of Schoology is to empower contemporary minds and allow students to teach each other while being able to generate income.
According to the Web site, students who upload or share notes with the rest of the community are paid based on the quality, popularity and helpfulness of their material. Schoology is able to afford these payments by using 90 percent of their ad revenue to pay students.
Under each document is a rating given by users and the number of times the document has been downloaded.
A unique feature of Schoology is its PeerTutor chat system, in which different users of the Web site can get together in order to tutor one another about various topics. Each person offering tutoring sets a price by the minute. Students are allowed to chat with the tutors at first in order to decide whether or not they want to pay for their services.
Princeton Review tutor Mike Anderegg said while the tutoring system would be good for general overviews of material, it could be lacking in some areas.
“My initial impression is that it seems too impersonal a service to do everything needed in detail,” Anderegg said. “There are some materials that have intricacies that could only be explained in person.”
Chris Barr, a senior majoring in political science and economics, agreed that teaching materials through a chat system would be difficult. However, Barr said he would be interested in making money through tutoring for the Web site.
“I would definitely be interested if I made enough, but I think I would probably have to pay the Web site a percent of what I made,” Barr said.
At the time of publication, the Web site had 334 tutors available online as well as 699 different notes uploaded to it. While membership is not restricted to any particular schools, there were no notes or tutors listed from CU, and most of the available tutors were from the University of Washington.
Schoology’s tutor and note selections cover a wide range of college courses, from architecture to C++ programming.
Barr voiced some concerns over paying by the minute for tutoring, saying he doubted he would have enough money to pay for the service himself.
“I think it could definitely be a useful site, if you have the money to pay for it,” Barr said.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Stephen Oskay at Stephen.oskay@colorado.edu.
