Selling course notes

Here is a NY Time article on the financial opportunity in selling class notes. This is one of those topics that relates to my past professional life. I had no interest in selling notes, but I was interested in the note-taking limitations of lower performing college students and how their learning might be improved by what were called “expert notes”. Those who purchase notes have achieved an important goal – they have acted in support of their learning. One of the problems I found in my research was that when expert notes were made available, the notes were more likely to be accessed by higher performing rather than lower performing students. Hence, it is difficult to do applied research on this topic. It is difficult to isolate the value of the more complete notes from the higher motivation to learn possibly implied by seeking the notes in the first place.

I was also interested in the potential of wiki notes. I would post an outline of presentations and invite any and all to add details. This never seemed to work. There was plenty of interest in detailed notes, but not in creating such a resource for peers. This is also an interesting question. Why, if students have taken more complete notes on a device, are they unwilling to share and collaborate?

These are issues in the transitions between the idealism of the lab and the frustrating realities of what most students are willing to do in support of learning. Selling notes to the needy works because of these disparities.

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