Learning Resources

New Partnership Lets Instructors Pick Student To Sell Class Notes to Classmates

• By Michael Hart
• 03/26/15

College instructors can now pick a Cengage Learning Scholar to share their class notes and study materials with their fellow classmates — for a price.

In an extension of an existing partnership between Cengage Learning and Flashnotes.com, any college instructor using a Cengage Learning product, like MindTap, can recruit one student in each course to be responsible for posting weekly summaries of the class work using notes, study guides, flashcards, video tutorials or live help on Flashnotes.com.

Other students can buy the study materials and the appointed student will receive 70 percent of each sale.

MindTap is Cengage's e-learning platform that supplements a college instructor's materials and lectures with interactive assignments, mobile apps and tools to help learn the course material more effectively. Flashnotes.com allows students to buy and sell learning materials and study guides from each other.

The two companies partnered with one another in September 2014 to integrate Flashnotes.com's online marketplace with MindTap. The latest development encourages instructors to appoint a student to offer his or her study notes to classmates.

The instructor-appointed Cengage Learning Scholars can set their own prices for the materials. Flashnotes.com recommends study guides be priced between $1 and $2 per page and lecture notes or textbook notes between 75 cents and $1.50 per page.

Arkansas Tech University instructor Carey Roberts said of the use of MindTap and Flashnotes.com, "Students' learning improved dramatically, and their grades improved by a full letter, from a C- average to a B- average."

Cengage Learning Chief Product Officer Jim Donohue said, "This provides instructors with another tool that can close the gap between the material covered in class and the material students understand."

Company representatives said Flashnotes.com has a rigorous internal review process to insure materials offered for sale are original and employs plagiarism detection software.