Best note-takers, worst note-takers, no-note-takers: take note. You could be making money - or making the grade - on GradeGuru.com, the file-sharing Web site that pays you to upload your notes and allows you to download the notes of your peers for free.
If it sounds like an impossible business model, it's because the year-old site isn't bringing in any revenue just yet. GradeGuru's parent company McGraw-Hill, a major textbook publisher, is handing out the student rewards with the expectation that advertisers will jump on board as more students begin using the site.
Participation levels at Penn are among the highest. Out of the 322 schools with registered student contributors, Penn ranks number two - behind Duke and two spots ahead of Yale - for total "points" earned by all users registered at the school.
Users earn points each time they upload a file to the site. The number of points they receive is a function of the quality of the notes, as measured by peer ratings and the breadth of material, according to GradeGuru founder and Harvard Business alumna Emily Sawtell. Contributors continue to score points each time another user downloads the file.
On the "MyRewards" page, users can redeem points for cash or rewards, such as gift cards to STA Travel, Campus Food and Starbucks.
College and Wharton sophomore Sushil Atmakuri said he earned $160 for posting approximately four sets of notes - each one for a semester-long course. College sophomore Jordan Levine said he made $50 for three sets.
Engineering sophomore Spencer Glantz said he uploaded seven single documents over winter break and made $20. "A lot of what I uploaded was for very specific classes," Glantz said, explaining that low demand among other users translated into fewer redeemable points.
What kind of material will GradeGuru take? "Basically anything that will not violate academic standards or impinge on academic ethical principals, but that will help students ensure that they are studying the right information," the Web site reads.
GradeGuru's standards are broad enough to include lecture notes, study guides, essays and outlines, completed assignments, solutions to questions on past exams, presentations and more, in either "digital" or "handwritten" - or scanned-from-a-notebook - form.
GradeGuru's philosophy
Sawtell, the creator of GradeGuru, said she was always interested in how students learn. In the summer of 2007, she conducted research that involved students video-taping themselves while they studied.
Sawtell found that students "want to know that they can be confident of the material that they studied" and that they "get to university a little bit unsure of what to expect," she said.
The Web site she founded is an answer to those concerns. Through reading the notes of their classmates, she said, "students can see how other successful students had done it."
They can also choose to connect with students who use similar study methods. "One of the great things about GradeGuru is that you can look at notes written in lots of different types of ways," Sawtell said, explaining that a student might prefer to organize the material as a "mind map" as opposed to a "strain of text."
For contributors, Sawtell said the site serves to encourage student engagement: "A lot of students say that knowing that other people are going to be using their notes makes them more diligent in taking notes."
At the heart of the GradeGuru philosophy is a belief in "the power of collaborative intelligence and the notion that a rising tide lifts all boats," according to the Web site. "We want to elevate the educational playing field by encouraging all students everywhere to achieve their best and to inspire others to academic heights."
Is sharing plagiarism?
Sawtell said GradeGuru neither promotes nor endorses plagiarism. "GradeGuru is a reference in the same way that a textbook is a reference," she said. "It is not a source to be ripped off and used unethically."
To that end, the site is currently in talks with "the leading anti-plagiarism provider" - an online plagiarism detection service - in an effort to prevent students from copying GradeGuru content and handing it in as their own or from contributing content to the site that is not legitimately theirs.
The latter offense may be more difficult to detect. When words from a professor's lecture are reproduced on the pages of a student's notebook, do the notes belong to the student or to the professor?
That was the dilemma that came to mind for philosophy graduate student Anna Cremaldi, who taught an ethics course this summer at Penn.
"It seems to me, first of all, that the professor should have a say in the way his or her lecture material gets used," she said. "Second, it strikes me as odd that the student should make money off of lecture notes. Isn't it the professor who did the work?"
GradeGurus aren't claiming that the ideas represented in the notes are their own - the purpose of the site is, after all, to share notes from class lectures - and users of the site could choose to make that intention clear by citing the source.
Still, a proper citation isn't an immunity shield against violations. "If the case can be made that your work consists predominantly of someone else's words or ideas, you may still be susceptible to charges of plagiarism," even if you give proper credit, according to Plagiarism.org, the educational arm of iParadigms LLC.
Penn Law professor Anita Allen warned that some professors' notes and PowerPoint presentations are copyrighted - and that getting paid to reproduce that material is both unethical and illegal.
"I would just advise any student who is contributing material to GradeGuru to be very careful," Allen said. "But if a student has created a truly original set of written materials, then I think the student has a right to post them on the Web and a right to make money from them."
Is it ethical?
Even if GradeGuru could make the site plagiarism-free, questions of ethics remain. When a professor gives a student a grade, is it not assumed that the grade is for the student's own work, including his or her own notes? In other words, does the use of GradeGuru constitute cheating?
Philosophy professor Adrienne Martin, who teaches several ethics classes, said one ethical consideration is "whether students are using the notes [of their peers] as a substitute for their own good work," as opposed to a supplement.
"I personally am very happy to have students share notes," she said. "But if a student has very detailed study notes [from someone else] and that allows them to blow off the semester and do well on the exam, I'm not happy about that."
Atmakuri, who interned for GradeGuru this summer, disagreed with Martin's estimation of work ethic. "A grade isn't supposed to reflect how much work you've done in that class," he said. "A grade is supposed to reflect how well you've demonstrated the knowledge of the material."
Atmakuri admitted that "realistically the people who can benefit the most [from GradeGuru] are procrastinators because they'd be stuck in that last-minute situation."
"But there's nothing wrong with that," he said. "They're still learning the material."
Besides, Atmakuri said, GradeGuru is only an extension of a practice that already exists: "People share notes all the time."
Many Penn fraternities and sororities, including Atmakuri's fraternity, maintain libraries of old notes and exams to pass down to their members. And like Martin, many professors are happy for their students to collaborate.
Adjunct professor of Law Edwin Greenlee pointed out that in law school, passing down the best notes and study guides are ingrained parts of the culture. The old exam file on the Web site dates back 15 years, he said, and faculty will post model student answers on exams - even entire blue books - online.
"I think a lot of times, when something is online, people say, 'Oh man, this is online,' and they don't really think about what already happens in the university setting," said Greenlee, who delivers a talk on plagiarism to law students each year. "Similar systems and similar ways of sharing the material exist in the paper world and have for a long time."
Still, in the traditional model of note-sharing, the system operates on virtues of sharing and community, not financial incentives. "Does everything have to be a market?" Martin asked. "Can't the educational experience be a model of open sharing and collaboration not done for profits?"
What's the point of class?
GradeGuru is only one of a handful of note-sharing sites gaining steam on the Web. In the promotional video for one site, isleptthroughclass.com, students are shown drinking beer at their laptops - a marketing strategy that targets a different kind of student from Sawtell's theoretical "GradeGuru."
None of the five "top schools" on GradeGuru.com, including Penn, are also among the top five on isleptthroughclass.com.
"I think it's very unfortunate that there are sites that are doing this with different ethics and different aims," Sawtell said.
But, she continued, having a copy of the notes shouldn't be enough in itself to succeed in a class. "Hopefully the course would be such that you will have to put thinking and analytical skills in order to perform well in your assessments," she said.
Economics professor Rebecca Stein, whose students have posted notes on GradeGuru, said she thought the site was "a good incentive to take good notes," but that for her class, "it would have little benefit for the users of the notes."
Stein explained that most of the content that appeared on the site was already available to her students on BlackBoard - and that her exams require students to apply the material, not regurgitate it. In other words, GradeGurus shouldn't expect to skip class and do well - at least not in Stein's microeconomics class.
"You learn through writing the notes," she said. "If you try to use someone else's notes to learn, I think you will not be successful. And if you are successful, then I think we need to rethink what we do in lecture."
Atmakuri agreed. "I think that if class can be written down on a piece of paper, then you don't really need to go to class," he said.
Still, Atmakuri said he didn't expect GradeGuru would change attendance levels at Penn because "the majority of people who would use GradeGuru to skip class probably skip class already."
What GradeGuru could stand to change at Penn, in Atmakuri's view, is the collective intelligence of its students.
"If you have a bunch of people in a class and without GradeGuru a certain percentage of those people didn't learn the material, and now you introduce this new study resource and everyone in the class has a grasp of the material, I think that's a good thing for Penn and a good thing for the life of the mind," he said.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
DonatePlease note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.