For students scouring the Internet for answers to their school questions, rejoice. A group of students and alumni have organized a website that takes a wide range of information, and puts it in one convenient place.

 

UniversityJunction.com is being produced by a team that includes Kathryn Eves, a third-year Carleton communications student. She has been working with a group of recent graduates from McGill University, University of Waterloo, Carnegie Mellon University in Pa., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and Florida International University.

 

“[We] have built an ethical, and really useful, alternative to test buying [or] note sharing websites,” Eves said.

“The site gives students access to non-copyright information for each of their classes . . . such as old tests, assignments and class notes, so students can quickly get access to the most relevant info to help them study.”

 

It is free for students to sign up, and they can then post questions, which will be answered within 24 hours.
During March, as exams draw near, the team has gathered a group of tutors to answer students’ questions on the website.

 

The tutors are a mix of upper-year students, grad students and recent grads from Harvard, Columbia and Yale.

 

“We are paying an organization to run the tutors in order to guarantee reliability of the answers and turnaround time,” Eves said. “We really want to create an academic forum where students shouldn’t be embarrassed to ask a question.”

 

There has been concern, however, over whether or not the website violates any of Carleton’s policies on academic integrity.

 

Ronald White-Jones, acting manager for the Student Academic Success Centre at Carleton, said “Any means for students to collaborate is a good idea . . . My concern would be if they were posting tests with the answers.”

MacOdrum Library at Carleton has old tests available, but generally without answer keys. He said that for the long term, the best way for students to learn is by figuring out problems by themselves, with cues, instead of superficial spoon-feeding.

 

He advises students to seek a second opinion from their teaching assistants to ensure that the answers they receive are correct.

 

“When students sign up for our site, they have to agree to abide by their school’s ethics policies,” Eves said.
Students can also flag material they deem inappropriate for either: copyright or intellectual property law infringement, offensive or derogatory material, or violating school ethics policies.

 

The University Junction team then manually reviews the material and possibly removes it.

 

The website was launched at the end of February and currently has 1,200 users from 56 campuses across Canada and the United States.