Back to School and Back to Studying – StudyBlue Finds Students Plan to Spend More Time Studying Online Than Using Social Networks This School Year
MADISON, Wis., Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ — StudyBlue, an online collaboration resource for serious students, found in a recent nationwide online survey that college students are twice as likely to plan on spending more than three hours a day online studying than doing any other online activity, including social networking and engaging in online entertainment. To meet this demand, StudyBlue today launched a new premium service to help students study smarter. The service, which is currently helping students at more than 2,100 colleges and universities nationwide with their studies, now offers students premium tools with expanded study and collaboration features, as well as an iPhone app to help them study on the go.
StudyBlue is an online service that helps students study smarter by connecting them with their classmates and other students around the country working on the same problems, studying the same topics, and using the same textbooks. Students can share notes with classmates, take notes online, automatically create flashcards, take quizzes, play brain games, and even create audio and video flashcards and notes.
The new premium service offers students a greater level of collaboration with students studying the same material and the iPhone/iPod Touch application for mobile studying. More specifically, the paid service offers study reminders based on students’ personal information and classes, the ability to study and print not only their own, but also other users’ notes and flashcard decks, and access to software that acts as a digital coach to track progress and recommend areas of improvement. In addition, they can receive study reminders through email, via SMS on their mobile phone or on their Facebook page. The premium service costs $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year and is available at www.studyblue.com.
“Over the last year we have seen incredible growth in our user base and survey data supports that more and more students look to online resources to help them prepare for class and study smarter,” said Becky Splitt, CEO of StudyBlue. “We know that students will appreciate the increased collaboration and increased mobility offered by our new premium service.”
Online Study Behavior
The release of these new tools comes as the Web has become a foundation for how students learn course material, do homework and prepare for exams. A StudyBlue survey conducted by SurveyU revealed that college students are more than twice as likely to spend three hours or more studying online (60%) than they plan on spending at social networking sites (26%).
Furthermore, the StudyBlue survey also revealed that most college students (84%) think the Internet has helped them more effectively and efficiently in school, and more than half of the total respondents (54%) anticipate spending significantly more time online this year versus last year for their studies.
Methdology
This study was conducted online among a nationwide U.S. population of 500 high school students (ages 13 to 18) and 1,011 college students (ages 18 to 24 years old) in August 2009. The sample, from SurveyU’s proprietary panel of High School and College students, provides a nationwide representation, as well as the broad range of college student types including: full-time, part-time, as well as 2-year, 4-year, and advanced degree candidates.
SurveyU (www.surveyu.com) is a market research and consulting firm best known for its proprietary panel of over 60,000 high school and college students. Headquartered in New York, NY, SurveyU combines expertise in the kid, tween, teen and young adult target demographics with custom and strategic market research and consumer insights.
About StudyBlue
StudyBlue.com is an online academic network available to students and teachers at both high schools and colleges. The Web service provides a variety of study and organizational aids, course management features, academic networking capabilities and other functions to assist students in improving their academic performance and help them study more efficiently. These tools also allow users to become part of a class-based, online, academic network helping them learn from each other through collaboration. For more information, visit www.studyblue.com.
SOURCE StudyBlue