The Brown & White

With the advent of a new Web site and application on Facebook, students across the world now have the ability to share course documents ? but some are questioning the project's intentions and credibility.

Course Hero, developed by Cornell University junior Andrew Grauer, allows students to contribute and access course material.

Using Facebook to advertise, Grauer launched the program in January 2008.

It caught on quickly, with more than 6,000 university students providing more than 500,000 documents.

According to the Web site, the mission of Course Hero is to provide open access to education resources.

It "aims to accelerate the acquisition of knowledge and deepen understanding" by creating a venue for students and professors to combine and share work with one another, according to the Web site.

"I co-founded CourseHero.com with the belief that information is valuable," Grauer said, "and its value can be increased if made effectively searchable, universally accessible and affordable among a variety of other contributing factors."

To sign on to Course Hero, students log in through their Facebook accounts.

But in order to gain access to documents, the user must post a certain number of documents themselves.

To gain access for a month, five documents are required, three months is 10 documents, six months is 20 documents and unlimited usage is 50 documents.

The Web site includes a wide variety of documents, such as outlines, study guides, exams, presentations, problem solutions and labs. The creators have also uploaded textbooks and their solutions guides.

Students with access to the Web site have the ability to search their own university, along with the course and/or the textbook they are using.

Besides the problem of gaining users, the Web site has to contend with plagiarism.

There is a general message on the Web site to touch on this problem, "Course Hero does not sponsor the use of shared educational course materials for unethical purposes, such as plagiarism or other forms of cheating," however it can't be prevented.

Grauer said it is not up to him how people choose to use the information shared on the program.

"I also founded CourseHero.com with the belief that it is the right of an individual who gains access to any type of information to choose how to use that information ? for good or evil," he said.

Although Grauer might not be overly concerned with the program's use, potential users are.

Meagan McDonald, '09, said she thinks the Web site will be used in unethical ways.

"It's a good idea in theory but people will abuse the information," she said. "I feel like if people are publishing their papers, other people will just plagiarize them."

Plagiarism aside, Grauer said proving the Web site's legitimacy to higher education will be one of the biggest problems and obstacles it will face.

"I imagine it will be an uphill battle," he said, "but hopefully professors too will believe in the value of universal education: sharing their knowledge with an audience much greater than their school classroom and learning from other professors and students at their institution or other institutions."

But officials of higher education might not be the only people Grauer needs to prove legitimacy to. Rachel Jeanes, '09, said she was unsure about the Web site's credibility.

"I am skeptical," Jeanes said. "I don't think I trust it. It sounds too good to be true, just seems something could go wrong with it. People are lazy and don't want to do their own work, so they'll just look online."