Are document sharing websites the heroes that students deserve?

As an experienced administrator on the Medicine programme at the University of Manchester, I’ve seen plenty of students come and go, but it was only after embarking on the OKHE course unit that I stopped to think about how profoundly technology has affected the student experience since my uni days. I have uploaded countless documents to our learning platforms (and experienced the collective backlash whenever a resource didn’t appear until *gasp* the day after the lecture!), but I had never given much consideration to the idea that students might also be using external open access resources.

My first port of call for more information was Dr Paul Shore, both the Medicine programme’s Academic Lead for Problem-Based Learning and an OKHE alumnus. Paul told me that some students uploaded their notes and exam papers to document sharing websites and gave me a link to an entry that one of our medical students had submitted to StuDocu. My initial reaction was to wonder whether this was ethical or even legal! I had heard of contract cheating, the practice of engaging a third party to write a bespoke assignment on your behalf, but I had no experience of document sharing sites like StuDocu or Course Hero.

So, where did these document sharing platforms come from and what are they all about? Sites like Course Hero started popping up in the mid-00’s claiming to — in the words of Course Hero’s founder, David J. Kim — ‘Maximize and accelerate academic breakthroughs by students’ by providing a platform on which students could share their study documents and communicate through discussion boards. In return for access, users could pay a membership fee (currently $39.95 for a one-off monthly subscription), and/or earn access to documents (‘unlocks’) by uploading their own. This caused, and continues to cause, some consternation among the educational community, some members of which bristle at the idea of students exchanging course materials for money.

The problem, as with most other advances in educational technology, is that document sharing sites are double-edged swords when it comes to academic integrity. Ostensibly, these platforms give students the opportunity to share their knowledge, however, they also open the door for less scrupulous individuals to upload and download content that violates copyright and enables plagiarism and/or cheating. Course Hero’s statement on academic integrity makes it clear that the platform ‘does not tolerate copyright infringement, plagiarism, or cheating of any kind’, although it also acknowledges that ‘some students do not use Course Hero in the manner for which it was intended’. Beyond the issue of academic integrity, what puzzles me is the idea that students are buying notes from people who are studying on exactly the same course. After all, you can search StuDocu by programme code in order to find the most relevant materials, so why wouldn’t you just ask your friends to compare notes, or contact a member of academic staff for guidance? Students are already paying £9000 plus per year for an education, so why spend extra on sites that are — in the opinion of some educators — ethically dubious?

Well, as luck would have it, Course Hero has put together an article called 10 Reasons to Use Course Hero so, in lieu of a survey to distribute to their 24 million members, I’m going to assume that Course Hero knows its own members and address each of their core reasons:

1. You missed a class

Ok, everybody misses the odd class, but rather than waiting on the off-chance that somebody uploads their notes to Course Hero, why wouldn’t students just save time and money and ask a classmate?

2. You misunderstood something important in class

University courses are very complex and some things will go over students’ heads, but isn’t that why they pay thousands of pounds a year to have access to lecturers? Who better to explain something you misunderstood than the person who taught it?

3. You’re confused by a core concept

This is a reference to the effectiveness of Course Hero’s study guides. Again, the University puts its own course materials together that are specific to their programme, so does this point to deficiencies in universities’ ability to produce course materials that present information in a student-friendly way?

4. You need to study for an exam

Maybe Course Hero can offer useful study tips but the Medicine programme has a team of academics that delivers study skills webinars to students and is available via e-mail and face-to-face.

5. You’re totally stuck on your homework

Course hero points out that their tutors are available 24/7 to answer questions but, again, wouldn’t it make more sense to ask the subject expert who delivered the material?

6. You want to check your work

Are Course Hero study guides really more reliable than programme-specific materials when it comes to students checking their understanding of complex topics?

7. You need help starting that essay

Course Hero encourages students to look at study documents for ‘general inspiration’, however, what one person calls ‘inspiration’, another person calls ‘plagiarism’, and the distinction isn’t always easy to define.

8. You’re picking a major or choosing classes

Traditionally, students could only gain insight into a particular course based on anecdotal evidence from their peers, but they can now check out exactly what was taught without so much as sending a text message to a friend.

9. You need general advice or inspiration

Course Hero has a blog and a student forum, but the University of Manchester offers an abundance of avenues students can go down to find advice: tutors, academic advisors, lecturers, pastoral support teams, study skills experts, peer mentors etc.

10. You’re a professor who needs help with planning or inspiration

This falls outside the scope of student course materials, but it would be interesting to know how many educators use Course Hero to plan their teaching and why they do so.

When I look at these ten reasons for using Course Hero, I’m left with more questions than answers. It seems to me that each of these issues could be solved by existing resources within the university: If you missed a class, you can ask a friend for their notes. If you’re not sure about something, you can ask the lecturer. If you’re struggling with revision, you can speak to the study skills team. I’m left to wonder whether the internet has birthed a generation of students who would rather turn to a membership website than approach another human being, or whether universities should be looking to these document sharing sites to identify the gap between what they’re providing and what students actually want.