Homework Problems Painkiller

By Marcin Gnat

 

Living in an era of social media, people are starting to appreciate the power of collaboration. Raising money for super niche movies or releasing books independently in many cases have been impossible until platforms like Kickstarter have gained popularity. The trend of collaboration via the Internet is gaining strength in many areas of life, and education is no exception.

 

Recent studies show that from the beginning of elementary school the quantity and the difficulty of homework continues to increase. According to reports from Metlife (2007) and Stanford (2014), high school students spend 1-3 hours a day doing their assignments. This means that after hours spent in school and then after-school activities, students have to refocus on their studies in much of their free time.

 

What’s more, students usually get stuck with difficult tasks and may have little chance to actually understand the topic. They have to either reach out for help from their parents (who in many cases do not have time or skills to do this) or get private lessons from tutors, which of course not everyone can afford.

 

How to solve that real and painful problem? Throughout time, students have reached out for help from their peers. But it is not always feasible or socially acceptable to reach out to friends for help – especially knowing the help you get may be suspect. That is why many students get frustrated or worse.

 

In an environment of Internet peer-to-peer networking, however, it is far more likely that there is someone keen to help you, anytime and anywhere. Crowd sourced learning platforms like Brainly.com attract students from all across the world in a variety of different languages. Users earn points for helping others to unstuck with their homework problems, and by earning points, they can reach out for help to others who are versed in some other subject areas.

 

The ultimate goal of these types of platforms is to help pupils understand certain topics, without just providing scripted, encyclopedic, and often inaccurate answers from untrusted resources.

 

Moderated by a community of experts in the hundreds, in most cases nearly 80% of the questions can be solved within the first 10 minutes using platforms like Brainly. This means that reliable answers can be received faster, than, for example, reaching out for help to your teacher via e-mail. With already over tens of millions of users, these types of platforms are already among the largest homework help platforms online.  And online teamwork and collaboration in the education space is only in its infancy.

 

About the Author:

Marcin Gnat is a journalist and a blogger fascinated with Edtech and works with Brainly team. He is also a music fan and a long distance runner.