A Canada-based website is looking for UF students to upload their course notes.
Notesolution has served more than 90,000 Canadian university students through social learning and is expanding to the U.S.
Currently, Notesolution has more than 100,000 documents, which cover more than 5,000 courses, according to the website. UF is not yet listed on the website.
UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said if individual student notes are uploaded to the site, it would not be a violation of the UF Student Conduct Code. However, uploading PowerPoint presentations and other specific instructions could potentially be in violation of the code because that is a professor’s intellectual property, she said.
“It depends on the situation and instructor directions in class,” Sikes said.
Kevin Wu, co-founder of Notesolution, created the website his senior year at the University of Toronto in 2010 with his friends Jack Tai and Jackey Li.
“We can help new students and be able to provide course notes for them or if they’re looking for supplementary reading material,” Wu said. “It’s also a good way for current students to pass down their knowledge.”
Students who want a job as a notetaker for Notesolution would upload lecture notes on a weekly basis for a base salary of $50. Depending on performance and commission, student earnings could be as high as $500 a week, according to the website.
Wu said the website does not promote students skipping class because it is based on a credit system.
Students obtain notes by paying for them with credits, which are only earned by uploading their own notes, he said.
Credits can also be redeemed for perks like gift cards, according to the website.
“In order for you to access, you have to contribute,” he said.
However, Wu said the website makes sure the quality of the notes are up to par by letting students preview 60 percent of the document before spending credits.
Wu said previewing the document lets students get an idea of the content and allows the option to give a document a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
Kelsey Thomas, a 20-year-old UF applied physiology and kinesiology junior said she would be interested in looking at the site to back up her notes.
“But I don’t know if I could trust other people’s notes,” she said. “I’d be concerned with how accurate they are.”
The website has documents for 39 U.S. universities, but a student’s university doesn’t have to be on the website for him or her to find useful information, Wu said. Students can get chapter notes by searching the name of their textbook.
“We try to make notes as useful across different campuses as we can,” he said.
Contact Alexa Volland at avolland@alligator.org.
