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Course Hero

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Course Hero
Type of site
Available inEnglish
FoundedOctober 2006;18 years ago(2006-10)inRedwood City, California
Headquarters2000 Seaport Blvd
Redwood City, California
Area servedWorldwide
OwnerLearneo
Founder(s)
  • Andrew Grauer
  • Gregor Carrigan
CEOAndrew Grauer
IndustryEdTech
URLcoursehero.com
RegistrationOptional (required for uploading and downloading documents, viewing full tutor answers and asking questions)
Current statusActive
[1]

Course Herois an Americaneducation technologywebsite company based inRedwood City, Californiawhich operates an online learning platform for students to access course-specific study resources and online tutors.

Subscription or content contribution is required for students to use the platform. [2]

Thecrowdsourcedlearning platform contains practice problems, study guides, infographics, class notes, step-by-step explanations, essays, lab reports, videos, user-submitted questions paired with answers from tutors, and original materials created and uploaded by educators. Users either buy a subscription or upload original documents to receive unlocks that are used to view and download full Course Hero documents.[3]

History

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Course Hero was founded by Andrew Grauer at Cornell University in 2006 for college students to share lectures, class notes, exams and assignments.[4]

In November 2014, the company raised $15 million in Series A Funding, with investors that included GSV Capital and IDG Capital. Seed investors SV Angel and Maveron also participated.[5]In February 2020, the company raised a further $10 million in Series B Funding, valuing the company at over $1 billion. The Series B round was led by NewView Capital, whose founder and managing partner, Ravi Viswanathan, joined Course Hero's board of directors. NewView Capital also contributed $30 million in what's known as an employeetender offer,a process by which NewView purchased company shares directly from Course Hero employees.[6]

Course Hero acquiredSymbolab,a mathematics problem solver, in October 2020, and acquired LitCharts, a literature guide resource, in June 2021. Terms of these acquisitions were not disclosed.[7][8]

In December 2021, the company received a $380 million Series C at a $3.6 billion valuation. This financing was led byWellington Managementand included investors such as Sequoia Capital Global Equities, OMERS growth equity, andD1 Capital Partners.[9]

Controversy

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Subscribers can download complete papers that were submitted by previous students and submit them as their own work. Additionally, the site allows students to upload homework and get completed work solutions from the site's contracted workers: an 'Essay mill' business. Users who upload content can use the site for free while others pay a fee.[10]

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The documents uploaded for sale are frequently the intellectual property of faculty members, not of the students who post them/sell them. Course Hero's Use Policy states that users must be authorized to post the file, however Course Hero does not verify this or notify copyright holders prior to submissions being uploaded. These files include exams and their keys, quizzes and their keys, study guides written by instructors.[11]Some papers include text copied from Wikipedia, while some are simply copies of Wikipedia articles.[12]

To protect the rights of the copyright holders, Course Hero must remove infringing content in accordance with theDigital Millennium Copyright Actafter receiving atakedown noticefrom the copyright owner.[13]The University of California provides guidance to instructors regarding language to include in course materials that may prevent uploading to Course Hero, as well as language to assert copyright and discourage students from uploading.[14]

However, the process to remove copyrighted material is burdensome and discourages people from following through on such claims. According to some, the sheer volume of material held by Course Hero makes the prospect of take-down requests unlikely since professors must submit a lengthy request for each individual document uploaded.[citation needed]

In March 2022, an assistant professor of business atChapman Universitysued students for posting portions of his midterm and final course exams on Course Hero.[15][16]

Faculty atEmbry-Riddle Universitydeveloped a search tool calledCourseVillain,which searches Course Hero for documents and other artifacts originating from their own university's courses. It identified over 200,000 such artifacts. The tool automatically partially populates take-down request documents, to aid university staff in asking Course Hero to remove their own work from the web site.[17]

Personal and sensitive information

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Student papers uploaded to Course Hero sometimes contain personal or sensitive information, which might then be shared with other users of the site. However, when users register for Course Hero, they grant the company a perpetual license to use the uploaded material.[11]

References

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  1. ^"Coursehero.com Traffic, Demographics and Competitors - Alexa".Alexa Internet.Archived fromthe originalon 2 May 2018.Retrieved2 May2018.
  2. ^"Course Hero Pricing".2023-02-25.
  3. ^Foderaro, Lisa W. (17 May 2009)."Psst! Need the Answer to No. 7? Click Here".The New York Times.
  4. ^Leiber, Nick (20 October 2011)."2011 Finalists: America's Best Young Entrepreneurs".BloombergBusinessweek.
  5. ^"Course Hero raises $15M for crowd-sourced study help - Silicon Valley Business Journal".Archived fromthe originalon 2014-11-13.
  6. ^"With $1.1B Valuation, Course Hero Joins the Edtech Unicorn Stable - EdSurge News".EdSurge.February 12, 2020.
  7. ^"Course Hero acquires LitCharts, founded by the creators of SparkNotes".TechCrunch.Retrieved2021-06-11.
  8. ^"Course Hero buys Symbolab in a rare edtech acquisition".TechCrunch.Retrieved2021-07-16.
  9. ^"For Course Hero, venture capital was once an unobvious solution".TechCrunch.Retrieved2022-02-07.
  10. ^Foderaro, Lisa W. (17 May 2009)."Psst! Need the Answer to No. 7? Click Here".The New York Times.
  11. ^abSmalley, Suzanne (February 15, 2022)."Course Hero contends with student privacy concerns".www.insidehighered.com.Retrieved2022-04-30.
  12. ^A simpleGoogle-Searchreveals text or whole layout copied of recent or previous Wikipedia article versions, e.g.: *https://www.coursehero.com/file/192393667/Algaepdf/*https://www.coursehero.com/file/113639508/Algaepdf/*https://www.coursehero.com/file/168526511/Algaepdf/
  13. ^"Submit a Takedown Notice".Course Hero.Retrieved2023-02-24.
  14. ^"Course materials inappropriately shared on Course Hero and similar sites".copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu.University of California.Retrieved2023-02-24.
  15. ^"A professor found his exam questions posted online. He's suing the students responsible for copyright infringement".Washington Post.ISSN0190-8286.Retrieved2022-04-30.
  16. ^Flaherty, Colleen (March 18, 2022)."Suing students who shared exams online to identify them".www.insidehighered.com.Retrieved2022-04-30.
  17. ^Redden, Elizabeth (April 2, 2021)."Course Hero, Meet CourseVillain".Inside Higher Ed.Retrieved2023-02-02.
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