Chegg announced a new educational platform on Wednesday that will offer professors and other educators a space to share content.
Named Uversity, the platform will allow thousands of US faculty members to add their lessons to Chegg’s study service, which currently has 59 million step-by-step solutions.
Chegg is working on the project with a panel of academics and Dr. Paul Kim, associate dean and CTO of Stanford Graduate School of Education.
To start, Uversity will only approve educators from accredited United States-based schools but said the content will be available to students anywhere in the world. Once the educators are approved, they will be able to upload videos and other types of content that can be searched for.
Teachers will be paid for the content they upload but will “retain ownership of their intellectual property rights and give Chegg certain limited exclusive licenses,” according to a company statement.
In a statement, Kim said students needed a platform with content that they are sure has been vetted by “credible and high-quality” educators.
“One of the great ways to learn difficult concepts is to see many examples and explanations from different angles. 21st-century tools designed to empower instructors who are carefully tailoring their own content for students who need help can be a game-changer in higher education,” Kim said.
Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig added that the company wanted to “create the world’s greatest library of effective, targeted, learning content” as a way to connect students across the world with educators and targeted content.
“Students are looking for reliable resources they can trust and learn from. That’s why we created Uversity, created and provided by leading academics to improve the quality and accessibility for the best learning materials to students around the world,” Rosensweig said.
Nathan Schultz, president of learnings services at Chegg, explained that students often complain about not having access to lesson plans and content outside of the classroom. He added that according to their data, just 10% of STEM and business faculty upload content online.
“There are 100 million students who could benefit from an educator’s passion and teaching expertise,” Schultz said.
Chegg’s 59 million step-by-step solutions accrued about 356 million views in Q1 and the company is hoping a new slate of practice tests, videos and notes will help bring in more users. Chegg is jockeying for space in the online education sector with sites like Quizlet, Course Hero, 2U, Khan and Varsity Tutors.
