Team Member(s):
- Austin Wallace
- Alex Crooks
Project Proposal:
To create an open-sourced system of sharing class notes, tentatively called UNote. UNote would be an app that is setup somewhat like an App Store. It would have an icon for the top rated notes, one for the top rated note-taker, one for faculty then subject and then course breakdowns of notes and one for updates to the courses that you are subscribed to. The app would be available on all major app stores and would require a (hopefully) one time login using CWL. Both students and professors would upload their notes, either from the desktop application or from the mobile app, to their specific class. The notes could then be downloaded by anyone with a CWL login. There would also be a (possibly semi-mandatory) 5-star rating system for the notes. You may have to rate a certain percentage of notes that you download, it would be a non-intrusive rating system. The first time that you leave a note that you are viewing, a dialogue box would come up with 5 outlined stars and you would rate it (or say remind me later/never). This would quickly give weight to the top notes section and would provide students with a viable alternative to using the professor’s notes and might even drive professors to produce competitive notes. UNote will be 100% free. However, note-uploaders would have the option to set up a tip-receiving account where anyone can tip the note-taker for an especially good set of notes. Given large class sizes, it is likely that the top note-uploader for each class would get a sizeable amount of tips. The app may be add supported, or it may take a small amount (say 5% off of each tip). In addition to text notes, images and audio/visual recordings will hopefully be supported. We believe that this app will make the student experience much better as a whole as they will have the choice to supplement their own notes with other notes. Some users may even find that they learn better through active participation and total focus during lecture and just reviewing someone else’s notes. Exceptional note-takers will have a significant incentive to upload their notes.