Course Hero is an online community for students across the globe to share/cooperatively learn from online lecture notes, syllabi, tests, flashcards and essays.  The goal of the site, according to President/CEO, David J. Kim, is to “maximize and accelerate academic breakthroughs by students.” That’s a concept that we wholly support!

Course Hero is a wonderful idea and there’s a wealth of information to be found on their website.  Virtually every subject on the planet has some kind of informational tool in the various Course Hero forums.  You can even type in live questions and get your questions answered by a tutor.

However, we have a few issues with course hero:

1.  While there’s a wealth of information available, you have to pay for it.  And, while we support online businesses, (after all we’re in the process of creating an online learning portal for The Premier Tutors) the information you find on Course Hero can be found for free on other sites, such as SparkNotes and Khan Academy.

2.  The verdict isn’t out on copyright infringement and plagiarism issues.  Professors and teachers work hard to create lessons, lectures, exam materials, and to provide original information.  If others are profiting from their work, the original creators should reap some of the profits, and right now they aren’t.  Course Hero is the only one profiting.

3. It’s important that you learn how to write your own well developed assignments, papers and essays—and Course Hero makes it way too easy for your conscience to take a walk while you rip off someone else’s work. Plus, even if you’re using someone else’s work in order to organize your own, you should know enough to recognize if the work you’re looking at is actually accurate.

So be careful to maintain a Hero’s Code of Ethics should you choose Course Hero as your learning guide.