Course Hero Debuts New "Course Advice" Feature

By Julia Dunn on March 21, 2016

On March 17, Course Hero, a popular educational technology platform for course-specific study resources and tutoring, unveiled a new Course Advice feature to make the platform “an even more holistic learning community for students,” according to a recent press release.

This feature aims to connect students who have already “been there and studied that” through a community advice-sharing platform that will complement Course Hero’s current study materials and 24/7 tutoring. It was soft launched last fall, and since then, high school and university students nationwide have shared over 50,000 entries on how to do well in certain classes, including essential tips and details to boost students’ academic performance.

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“Choosing the right classes, workload, and instructors whose teaching styles align with your learning style are critical to performing well, learning deeply, and staying on track to graduate,” said Course Hero CEO and Co-founder Andrew Grauer, in the press release. “With the Course Advice feature, students can more accurately prepare for their semesters and get the most out of their education because we take a different approach — we focus on advice for how to excel in the course, not on the personality of the professor.”

The new Course Advice feature helps students master their classes by allowing them to share feedback on the courses they’ve already taken and offer advice to help others study more efficiently and thus improve their learning. Through this platform, students can quickly answer a few questions about what they learned, how much time they spent studying course materials, what exactly they did to succeed, and what they wish they had known before going into the class.

To help other students get the most out of their class experiences, users can add tags to their posts such as “requires group work outside of class,” “go to office hours,” “participation counts,” and “great discussions.” This information may assist students in planning more balanced terms or getting ahead of a difficult workload even before their first day of class. If a student knows beforehand that a certain class involves certain types of partner activities or that reading a textbook is essential to passing a class, they will be able to make more informed class choices to best accommodate their learning needs. This communication could mean the difference between passing a class with an A grade and passing with a C.

While it may be true that students usually learn best from a teacher whose instructional style works well for them, the Course Advice function helps students prepare for a class no matter who is teaching it. The more students know about their future classes, the better prepared they can be for success.

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