Versity.com Loses Home hed: Student Advantage Inc. and Versity.com Not Under the Same Roof

by Jennifer Furia
FOR THE POST

With the help of a friend named Versity.com, Ohio University sophomore Kelly Bartemes had no trouble turning off his alarm and falling back asleep without giving a second thought to the lecture class he would be missing.

"If you missed a day or two of class, it was nice to be able to get the notes easily online," he said.

But with the disappearance of Versity.com, Bartemes said he is lucky that his classes this quarter do not rely heavily on lectures and that most of his professors now put their notes online. Versity.com, an online service that posted free lecture notes for more than 6,900 classes at more than 145 colleges and universities, was practically a second roommate to some OU students by last Spring Quarter.

This fall, however, Versity.com is no longer available. "They were surviving, but they just weren't profiting," said Rachel Tomko, an OU senior who was employed by Versity.com last year. As a campus manager, Tomko hired all Course Research Coordinators (note-takers) and marketing representatives. Versity.com was bought by CollegeClub.com, the number one college-orientated Web site, according to a report from Media Metrix and PC Data Online.

The San Diego-based CollegeClub.com has acquired several other college-orientated Web sites including CollegeStudent.com, eStudentLoan.com, Campus24.com and collegeBeat.com. The new move seemed like a secure deal for Versity.com, considering that CollegeClub.com's membership grew from 1 million to 3 million in 10 months, according to CollegeClub.com's Web site (http://www.collegeclub.com).

But then the problems started. CollegeClub Inc. filed for bankruptcy, and Boston-based Student Advantage Inc. soon acquired it in August 2000 for a deal worth $20 million in cash and stock, according to the CollegeClub Web site. But there were some assets of CollegeClub.com that Student Advantage Inc. did not wish to acquire, one of them being Versity.com.

One reason that Student Advantage may have had a lack of interest in Versity.com is the controversies surrounding whether offering a professor's lecture notes online is considered copyright infringement. OU psychology professor Paula Popovich, whose Psychology 101 lecture notes were available on Versity.com last year, said she thinks the information she covers in class should not be allowed to be reproduced online.

"I have on my syllabus a line now that reminds people that the information covered in this class is the intellectual property of me, the instructor, and for them to make money from it is not acceptable," she said.

Popovich said it is extremely important for her students to attend class every day. Bartemes, who used the Versity.com site last year, said he does not think getting notes online is copyright infringement.

"If you know someone in a class, and you copy their notes, that's the same thing as getting them online," he said.

Bartemes said the notes were useful when a student missed a day or two of a class.

Constance Davis, an OU associate professor of journalism, said copyright laws tend to apply only to works in a fixed form, so a professor's spoken lecture is not necessarily protected by copyright laws.

"It is more of an ethical issue than a legal issue," said Davis.

Jamie Heberling, an OU sophomore employed by Versity.com last year as a CRC, said she sees no problem with the online service.

"What student wouldn't want to skip that 8 a.m. lecture class where the professor won't know whether you're there or not?" Heberling said. "I don't think it should be any of the professor's business if a student wants to type up their notes and share them with the world."

According to the Versity.com Web site (http://www.versity.com), the notes are meant to "fill in the gaps in their own notes; clarify points that they may have missed; gel their own thoughts."

Heberling said she believes the online notes are not plagiarism.

"One thing that we were told was that we had to put the notes into our own words. We were not allowed to write verbatim what the professor had said," she said. "And any handouts that were given out by the professor had to be restated in our own words."

The "in our own words" clause is what upsets Popovich the most. "It's not so much the profit that bothers me, as often as the distortion of (the material). There's no accountability for that, and that becomes a problem," she said. "I think that the best thing for (students) is to hear it from me as opposed to an unreliable online source."

Heberling said she did a more than adequate job, and that her notes were very reliable.

Tomko said Versity.com was bound to encounter critics.

"If you're at 150 schools, there's going to be a few that don't like it," she said.

The future of these free online lecture notes is unclear because no company has purchased Versity.com. Neither Student Advantage Inc. nor CollegeClub.com were available to comment. Two other online sites, study24-7.com and studentU.com, post free online notes for a few OU classes, but they do not offer the broad range of courses that Versity.com did.

OU students also can purchase class notes from Grade A Notes, 13 W. Union St. The company employs note-takers to sit in on certain classes and then sells their notes. Some professors, like Popovich, do not allow the note-takers in their classes.

Representatives from Grade A Notes were not available for comment.

So until Versity.com finds a buyer or another free online service is born, students will have to roll themselves out of bed for those early lecture classes.