Grade Genie: Upload Yours

It seems we have another entrant into the classroom collaboration space, an area we have covered closely in recent weeks. Grade Genie allows students to upload their own personal study guides, notes, homework assignments and other materials in order to improve grades and those of other students struggling in classes. Grade Genie joins the likes of CourseHero, Blackboard, NoteMesh, ShareNotes and NoteCentric in the race to be the number one central location for user-generated class materials. The company was founded by Cary Silverman (University of Missouri-Columbia) with the vision of a universal collaboration system that would greatly enhance the learning experience. One differentiating factor between Grade Genie and CourseHero (the company's closest competitor in my opinion) is that Grade Genie explicitly forbids its users to upload documents that have been created by professors, claiming that it is a complete violation of copyright laws. But copyright isn't the only hurdle Grade Genie has to jump. All of the notes are user-generated meaning that the credibility of the content is highly variable. Questions of integrity are also being posed by the academic community. Professors and university administrators must begin warming up to the idea of online collaboration. It's a process that students are already engaging in and services like Grade Genie are simply providing a platform to facilitate it. These utilities cause no harm to the learning process as long as they openly oppose plagiarism and cheating. Solving the problem of plagiarism and cheating does not begin with eliminating the availability of collaboration tools, but rather through deploying more advanced detection software and initiating early-on education on the severity of the issue.