When University of Wisconsin senior Olivia Jonynas got sick her sophomore year and missed a significant amount of class time, she was able to catch up quickly with the help of just one website: StudyBlue.

StudyBlue is an Internet cloud-based service that allows students to create flashcards and post their notes for others to view. It is one of many such sites which allow students to share their notes with a large group of their peers.

These online note sharing sites have been around for years, according to Nancy Lynch, associate director of the UW Office of Administrative Legal Services.

“They have been around for as long as the Internet has been around. They are always there, but what is interesting is that they have a surge every once and a while,” Lynch said. “We had a flurry of activity this fall on it.”

With a student population that continues to do more and more sharing and communicating online, these types of sites are here to stay. However, due to legal and ethical concerns these sites will have to be examined by students and professors. Even more importantly the value of attending class may be questioned if students can go online and with a few easy clicks download all the notes.

Types of Note Sharing Sites

There are many different kinds of online note sharing sites, some of which are completely free.

However, there are also sites that offer students money and rewards to post notes online and charge students who want to view the notes.

One of the most popular sites among UW students is StudyBlue, which offers free access to notes and a premium viewing option.

“Students can mobilize their notes. They can not only view them online but also on their phones … that are internet enabled,” StudyBlue Director of Learning Matt Messenger said. “It’s like a virtual backpack.”

Another company that offers free access and rewards to students who regularly post notes online is wisecampus.com.

Ryan Sapp, founder of wisecampus.com, formerly islepthroughclass.com, said they launched the website back in 2007 and have grown tremendously since then.

“We are at over 1,000 universities and have more than 35,000 active members that go on the site at least once every three months,” Sapp said.

Wisecampus.com offers gift cards from companies like Amazon and Victoria Secret as rewards for users who post content to their site, Sapp said. The higher ratings and more content a student posts, the more points they were earn towards getting gift cards.

Another site, Notehall, offers cash rewards to contributors. Co-founder and CEO Shawn Conway said he has seen high-earning students make between $1,000 and $1,500 during a semester.
In fact, according to Notehall’s website, site users have made $619,409.01 since the company was started.

A preview of the notes is posted online for other students in the class to view and purchase, Notehall co-founder and President Justin Miller said. There is a rating system built in the website so students can know what kind of quality the notes are.

Conway said on average regular notes are $2 and study guides are $4.

He added they are hoping to create a place where anyone interested in a subject can go online and learn about.

“We want to be an interactive platform for students and anyone who is curious about learning a certain curriculum,” Conway said. “And people who add valuable content can go ahead and get paid for it.”

Copyright Issues

One of the major issues with sharing lecture notes and study guides is protecting the intellectual property rights of the instructors.

UW Law Professor and Copyright expert Shubha Ghosh said if a student posts printed out materials or prepared power point slides online, it is a violation of the professor’s copyright. Ghosh added it is also a violation if the student writes down verbatim what the professor said in their lecture.

It gets more complicated, however, if the student posting the notes changes the words and adds their own thoughts and interpretations.

“Good students will put what they are saying in their own words. In that case, the professor’s copyright may be not violated,” Ghosh said.

Lynch said when professors contact her about concerns over their notes being used online without their permission, she suggests they contact the online site because most of them have a mechanism for handling copyright complaints.

Messenger said StudyBlue takes copyright and academic integrity very seriously. He added they adhere to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The DMCA was signed into law in 1998 by President Bill Clinton and amended the original Copyright Act. The DMCA, among other things, offered protection to online service providers against copyright infringement if they had created a mechanism for hearing copyright notifications and removed the material if it is violating copyright law.

Messenger said StudyBlue has a system in place for professors to notify the company if they feel their materials have been put online illegally, and if a professor sends them a complaint they ask the student to take down the notes.

Conway said Notehall has heard complaints from professors, but he said when they explain the material is just notes and not actual exams they are more comfortable with the idea.

Lynch also suggests professors talk directly to students who have posted their lecture materials online because many times students do not know the copyright laws.

“Part of the problem is students do not generally understand,” Lynch said. “We had one issue where a company was suggesting that it is working on behalf of the institution, and the students could feel this is authorized by the university.”

Sapp said they have taken down a few notes because of e-mails and complaints from professors, but he added it has not been much of a problem.

Students could face possible disciplinary action because copyright infringement is against the law, Lynch said. However, they try to educate first time offenders about the law.

There are several good resources available online for students to check out to learn more about copyright law, including the government’s website, a crash course on copyright law from the University of Texas and other materials available through Stanford University, Lynch said.

Lynch said the best course of action for students if they want to post notes online is to speak with the professor before posting them.

“I’m not pretending people don’t do this, and just because someone hasn’t complained about it does not mean it is not infringement,” Lynch said.

Impact on Learning

The ease and availability of notes being posted online may force professors to re-evaluate their class.

UW Associate Professor in Curriculum & Instruction and Associate Co-Director of Educational Research and Development at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery Kurt Squire said you don’t have to look deep to see how transformative this could be.

“I hope that it forces people to carefully think about what the purpose of lectures are and what it is you are trying to accomplish,” Squire said.

UW educational sciences professor David Williamson Shaffer said part of the value of an education is the face-to-face contacts students form at school, and online notes does not threaten that.

“But more to the point, it suggests that we as professors need to make sure our classes are more than just the material in the notes, more discussion, more interaction and providing small group work,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer added if students decide not to go to class and just use these kinds of notes they are just cheating themselves.

The online sites are continuing to grow and are also changing and hoping to have a real impact on the secondary education landscape in the country.

“It’s been remarkable how fast we have grown and how well students have adopted the concept. It’s eventually going to turn into an open platform for knowledge, where all this information will be,” Conway said. “It’s a lot of fun watching the education industry change in front of us.”