Studium connects students, prevents cheating

Claire Lefton
Fri, 02 Mar 2018 03:58:06 +0000
Campus, featured, new app, students, Studium, woo

Two students have developed a new app that aims to help classmates connect and study together.

Chris Asman, a third-year in operations management, and Nafis Azad, a third-year in new media and communication technology, created Studium, which launched on Feb. 26, after noticing how little people interact with each other in class.

“I would be in the library studying for exams, and when it came to a point where I needed help answering a question or couldn’t find the answer I was looking for, I got frustrated knowing that there were probably 50 kids studying for the same exact exam that I was … but I had no way to reach out to them, introduce myself to them, or know who they were,” Asman said.

Asman decided the solution to his frustration was making something that brought students together on one platform to work together for academic success.

“We crowdsource students from every lecture and recitation for a given course and then we allow students to connect, find other students within their course to create, share, and join study sessions that are course-relevant,” Asman said.

The initial brainstorming for Studium took place over the summer. Before fall, they had started development which lasted six to eight months with the software company Azad works for called Ghostlab.

Features include messaging and a social network-like friending system, but the most important aspect, to Azad and Asman, is the availability of peer study sessions.

The app also will prevent cheating in the way that was perpetrated on a large scale during the GroupMe scandal, which led to 83 students being charged with violations of the student code of conduct. That incident served as an inspiration for some development aspects.

“We took the feedback about the GroupMe scandal and refined our messaging functionalities to limit photo-sharing, video-sharing, and to open up messaging transcripts to the administration,” Azad said. “So by being a partner with the administration, by limiting the amount of media content that can be shared, we believe that it is a big deterrent to any cheating.”

After trying out the app on the Ohio State student body, Azad and Asman eventually want to expand and share their tool with universities and students wishing to connect across the country.

“We want to make this a tool that we think can empower students everywhere,” Azad said.