Course Hero Helps Students Master Their Courses

In the fast-paced world of education, people young and old find a variety of methods to help them conquer workloads and advance in their studies. In the 21st century, they don’t have to feel alone while doing it.

Course Hero is a company that does what the name implies: It helps students master their coursework. Students and educators can share and access supplemental resources from anywhere, all in the name of success.

Course Hero CEO Andrew Grauer spoke with RewardExpert about the company’s ability to connect students with course-specific study resources, expert tutors, customizable flashcards and course advice.

A concept born out of necessity

Grauer founded Course Hero in 2006 while he was a student at Cornell. He said he aimed to build the largest online library of course-specific questions and answers. His vision was an educated culture that shared knowledge both in and out of the classroom.

“Before Course Hero, I was a student for most of my life,” Grauer said. “That was my job, and it absolutely informed Course Hero. I was our potential user and customer.”

Grauer grew up in a family where his parents strongly believed in the importance of education and persistence. His father was a professor at Columbia and MIT, while his mother was one of only three female MBA graduates in the 1972 University of Chicago class.

“My whole life as a student who cared about high academic performance very much informed Course Hero’s founding and vision,” he said. “I realized that for me, and other students and educators, continuous performance at the highest level is really stressful. I came to the conclusion that there had to be a better way to study efficiently and learn deeply and do well in school.”

Crowdsourcing yields results

Course Hero is different from the competition, Grauer said, because of the huge size of its library. The collaborative community is vast: more than twelve million students and educators from all over the world “gather” to share knowledge through Course Hero.

User-generated content is tagged to specific schools, courses and subjects. Search options run deep, which leads to easier searches that are conducted with more efficiency, fitting each individual’s particular needs.

“Interestingly, users are exploring content not only from the courses they are currently enrolled in, but also relevant content from similar courses at other schools — hence, the power of collaboration and personalization,” Grauer said. “This contrasts to many other study sites that group more generalized materials by meta subject area.”

Building up the backbone

Since Course Hero depends on a library that prides itself on its great size, Grauer said a continued goal is to build the “biggest and best” digital library of course-specific educational content and effective tools to help facilitate the mastery of a course. Any search by a student or educator should yield a variety of helpful results.

There are Course Hero apps on both iPhone and Android platforms. Users can also find it on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest by searching for “Course Hero.”