Are you in college and need some study or homework help? If so, you may be wondering if Course Hero is worth your time and money.
Here is an in-depth exploration of Course Hero to determine if you should sign up for this service:
Is Course Hero Worth Your Investment?
Course Hero may not always be the best option for college students – not only is the service highly priced but there is no guarantee that you will find what you are looking for – there is also some concern about the legitimacy of certain services.
Does Course Hero Help with Homework?
If you are looking for homework help, Course Hero has two options for you. You can choose from various documents uploaded to the site or you can ask a question on the site and wait for an answer.
When it comes to documents, it is important to realize that not all of them boast the same quality. Some documents may be well-written and be great sources of information while others may be poorly constructed.
Then, what about the answers? Well, the thing is that there is no way to know who is providing the answers to the questions that you are asking.
Due to this, you can’t verify that the answer you are receiving is actually accurate. If you have little to no understanding of the material to begin with, these false answers may lead you astray and bring down your grade.
Therefore, Course Hero may only be good homework assistance if you have some grasp of the content that has been covered in class.
Is Course Hero a Good Tutoring Option?
With Course Hero, you may or may not get a good tutor. The issue is that you can’t verify or guarantee the accreditations or capabilities of your tutor.
Due to this, if you need a lot of help and end up with a bad tutor, you may not realize it until it is too late. At this point, you will be out of money and time.
The other issue is that a number of tutors have complained about Course Hero in the past due to non-payment. This appears to be a recurring problem.
This increases the likelihood that the people that you are getting on the site aren’t up to scratch.
This is especially true if you are handling advanced content and need a tutor with at least a graduate degree in the topic.
Does Course Hero Have Appropriate Resources?
One of the perks that is often talked about with Course Hero is the numerous documents available on the site. Therefore, you would imagine that you have all the resources that you need.
Now, to a certain extent, that is true. The sheer number of documents increases the likelihood of you finding what you need on the site.
Much of these documents will likely cover more basic courses or pre-requisite ones. However, there aren’t nearly as many materials for niche or advanced courses.
So, it is likely that this subscription will not yield the same results for all students.
The other thing to keep in mind is that when you upload a certain number of documents onto Course Hero, you are awarded a certain number of credits. In turn, this gives you access to resources on the website.
The problem is that Course Hero doesn’t really verify the quality of the documents. As such, you may get assignments with wrong answers or poorly written documents.
You can’t always trust every resource or document that you come across Course Hero. This means that you often have to expend extra energy verifying the information that you find there.
To add to this, Course Hero doesn’t check the ownership of the documents. If you aren’t careful, you may end up with documents that aren’t meant to be shared or may have been taken from the legitimate owner.
Is Course Hero Reasonably Priced?
You have three options when signing up for Course Hero – a monthly subscription of $35 a month, a quarterly plan of $20 each month, and a yearly plan of $10 a month.
As you can see, the cheapest option here is the yearly plan. However, if you are subscribing to it for 9 to 12 months of the year, it is far from cheap.
The real question, though, is whether Course Hero is worth the value.
There isn’t a straightforward answer here. On the one hand, if you are a freshman and need resources for basic classes, then you can get quite lucky on the site. In this case, you would say that it is a reasonable option.
On the other hand, if you are taking more advanced classes or need access to more niche topics, then you aren’t going to be quite so fortunate. In this instance, the price can’t be justified.
There is also the fact that you can’t trust the information that is provided to you on the website. Therefore, whenever you do use the resources, you are taking a chance.
Considering that there are far better services for lower costs, Course Hero isn’t a reasonably priced option. Thus, it isn’t the best investment that you can make for your education.
Is Course Hero Allowed By Colleges?
This is a grey area. An increasing number of professors are becoming aware of Course Hero.
Some are fine with you using it as a resource or a tutoring service while others are completely against it.
One of the issues that professors have is when exams, quizzes, etc. are copied to the site without their permission. If a professor tends to use similar questions for each of these exams, getting a peek at the tests may be considered cheating.
Therefore, this is something that you will need to check with your professor before considering Course Hero as an option.
Is Course Hero Worth the Money?
For the most part, it appears that Course Hero is not worth the subscription cost – it may be of some use to those looking for resources for basic courses but is unlikely to be of much help to advanced students or those enrolled in niche courses.