NC State students have a new opportunity to use notes taken by their classmates to study for upcoming tests.
OneClass, an educational platform based out of Toronto, Canada, provides students with a library of student-made exam study guides, video tutorials and lecture notes.
According to co-founder Kevin Wu, OneClass has just over half a million study guides and notes covering more than 30,000 classes from 1,700 different universities in North America.
OneClass began working with NC State students just this past year and already has a total of over 3,000 documents, including class and textbook notes and study guides.
Savi Chakraborty, content manager at OneClass, said that a survey was conducted to quantify the success of these resources and found that nearly 90 percent of the students who use OneClass have increased their grade by at least one letter.
All notes and study guides that are provided by OneClass come from either current or past students who have taken the class themselves. Wu believes this aspect contributes to OneClass’s success.
“We deliver content that is seen through a student’s eyes, a student’s own interpretation of the class material,” Wu said. “I think some of the learning takes place outside of the classroom, so that is what we really try to do with the platform. It has been really helpful to the millions of students we’ve helped so far.”
Chakraborty explained that not all documents submitted by students are approved by OneClass. There is a team of employees who review submissions, ensuring they adhere to certain quality standards.
“We have a control team who ensure that the materials submitted are not copyrighted and that they are not using the exact words of the professor,” Chakraborty said. “The team also verifies that the students are actually attending those classes by having students submit a copy of their class syllabus.”
OneClass uses a credit system to incentivize students to upload their notes. Students earn 25 credits for every approved document they upload and can use these credits to unlock documents. In addition, a student with 1,200 credits, or approximately 48 uploads, has the option of exchanging these credits for a $10 gift card.
Wu explained that if a student doesn’t have anything to contribute, the service offers three pricing plans at $39.98 per month, $59.94 per semester or $119.76 per year. All of these plans guarantee students access to more than 500,000 documents and the ability to print and unlock documents directly to a desktop.
According to Wu, the mission of OneClass is to provide students with the resources they need to study more efficiently and graduate on time.
“It is getting to be a big topic where, instead of graduating in four years, students are graduating in five or six years,” Wu said. “That really ends up costing the students and their families thousands of dollars on top of what they are already paying for tuition.”
Since its founding in 2010, OneClass has grown their membership and currently works with nearly 2.2 million students. Chakraborty identified the growth of OneClass as their biggest achievement so far.
“We are expanding very aggressively in the U.S. and plan on expanding into the U.K. in the near future,” Chakraborty said. “We hope to reach more than 2,000 schools in total.”
For Wu, the success of OneClass is displayed in the positive feedback they receive from students using their services.
“In terms of the successes, I think we see a lot on a daily basis through students reaching out to us on Twitter or Facebook and thanking us for providing them with the notes and study guides they needed to pass their classes,” Wu said. “We have actually had quite a few students tell us that their computer lost everything, and luckily, they were able to find the notes they needed on the website.”
For more information about OneClass, click here.
