What do you see when you look out at your students? Do you see them writing down everything you write and everything you say? How does it make you feel? Honored, proud, powerful?
What if those same students then put those notes online and share them with the rest of the class, or the world? What if they sold those notes to a note-selling business like Einstein’s Notes, for profit? Would you be okay with that?
Michael Moulton, a University of Florida professor felt violated when it happened to him. So much so, that he filed a lawsuit in 2008. An article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed shows Moulton’s frustration with students who participate in these activities.
A more recent altercation took place at San Jose State University. Here, it was determined that the student does have the right to display homework results online.
Many professors invite the use of shared notes amongst classmates. They see it as an opportunity for collaborative study. A research paper by DeZure, Kaplan & Deerman indicates that students (in general) fail to record 40% of the important points in a typical lecture. First-year students, on average, do considerably worse.
Whatever your take on this, there are several note taking and sharing sites available today.
Here are some links to other blog posts / articles on this topic in case you are, like us, morbidly fascinated with this industry that is emerging around the economy of notes:
- The corridor of uncertainty
- Taking notes beyond the classroom
- Sharing your notes online – and getting paid for it
- Finished with your exam? Good, now share it.
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