FinalsClub.org

FinalsClub is a social learning platform geared explicitly toward students in formal institutions of higher education. With this grant, it would launch KarmaNotes, the latest design iteration of its open source note-sharing platform. This project is another FinalsClub experiment in using incentives to enlarge the community of students sharing openly licensed notes as educational resources.

FinalsClub is a social learning platform geared explicitly toward students in formal institutions of higher education. We propose a grant to improve the utility and features of its platform and to expand its active user base into more institutions of higher education. The site is well established at Harvard University, with approximately 1,500 registered users, hundreds of study guides and related materials, and thousands of annotations that student users have shared with each other and the world. The site uses open source technologies and methods, expanding the reach of elite and open educational practices to everyone worldwide. There are virtually no student-centric OER sites in operation, let alone in Hewlett's portfolio, so FinalsClub fills a crucial gap in the Foundation's strategic objectives for OER.