We’ve all gone asking friend to friend for notes before the exam at some point in life. We’ve all also waited for hours (at least that’s what if felt like) outside photocopy shops awaiting our turn only to get pushed, shoved and hurried into buying whatever material the ‘photocopy wale bhaiya’ gives us. Wouldn’t it just be easier if you could get good quality study material sitting at home while planning out your study session? What if you could get notes from students in other colleges within your university? What if you could get all this and spend less than you do at the photocopy shop? That’s pretty much what you get at Notehall India (www.notehallindia.com). Notehall India, is India’s first ever online platform for college students just like you to share supplemental learning material, all at the click of a button!
Notehall was launched in 2008 in the University of Arizona by 4 young college students. They too faced a similar conundrum as most of us face here, how to get the best notes to study before the exam? Gooooogle would give lists of suggestions on each topic, but in most cases the links were of Wikipedia entries, which never really covered what was coming for the exam. And they realized it was not just them, others too faced the same problem. So they decided to do something about it and came up with the idea of Notehall. The main reason behind the idea was to make sharing of notes easier amongst classmates so that those who didn’t have study material for whatever reason could easily get it all at one place online, without having to go around asking everyone in their class. The main challenge for them was getting content on the site, and then it struck them, if students got a small incentive for sharing their notes it would encourage them to upload content on the site. Thus, the birth of Notehall.com, a website that gives students an incentive to share their self made study material while providing one platform for students to get all the notes they need, making sharing of notes within a university, easy, time saving and light on the pocket. Within a few months, the concept caught on like wildfire and expanded to a multitude of Universities all across America. In February of 2011, Notehall India went live and operations started in August of 2011.
The reason why the concept was brought to India is because; within one university there is a gap between colleges due to the university structure, no common campus and lack of investment into infrastructure. This means for instance, Delhi University, doesn’t have one common platform where students can interact and share study material online yet all of them have the same course and answer the same questions in their exams. That is what Notehall India wants to do, bridge that gap and provide students with one platform where they can share notes, assignments and other study material online.
Since August, 2011, Notehall India has generated a lot of interest from students in Delhi University, IP University and Amity University, and some from places as far off as Manipal and Pune and Mumbai University as well. From DU, IP University and Amity University the site has got over 1500 notes and study guides, (this number is rising by about 20 to 30 daily) and over 3500 registrations. The document count is already an achievement in itself as no other website has that much content in terms of notes from just 3 universities.
Disclosure:Â Notehall India is a partner organization of Youth Ki Awaaz.