I vividly remember the way I used to learn notes during my school days, by hiding up the answer through my hand so that just the Question is visible. We all used to do that, didn’t we ? Well, Classmint has re-imagined that Cornell style studying, by giving it a digital avatar. Let’s take a look.
Based out of Bangalore, Classmint is a free (and ad-free) online platform, wherein students get to memorise their notes through Cornell style of studying. Just to give you an idea of what Cornell-style of note-taking is, it was a system devised in the 1950s by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University, to allow students to memorise things more efficiently.
The student divides the paper into two columns: the note-taking column (usually on the right) is twice the size of the questions/key word column (on the left). You can know more about the system here.
Classmint uses the Cornell concept of note-taking, albeit, in a digitalised format. Considering the huge amount of time students stay glued to screens these days, Classmint has devised a simple animated style, wherein the digital notes are divided into two separate columns. Once you start memorising, the platform gives you an option to fold or unfold the notes.
If you click on fold, the right half of the digital notes which contains the answers, gets folded and what remains is the left-half of the notes with the questions. Once you have memorised answers, you can simply click on the fold button (obviously depending upon your own honest intent) and go through the questions.
[huge_it_gallery id=”10″]However, what sets Classmint apart from other online education ventures, is the fact that students and learners can create their own notes, in real-time and then revise on the same. Classmint offers you a rich-text editor, which allows you to select different formatting styles, allowing you to highlight, change fonts, colors and lots more.
Apart from offering Cornell style notes, Classmint also offers you the ability to learn notes through a simple slideshow. All you have to do, is simply click on the Play button and your notes will start appearing on a full-screen slide show.
Classmint claims to be serving some 30,000 monthly active users with a 30% month over month growth rate. Its users have created 36,000+ notes in 20+ languages from 30+ countries and these numbers continue to grow. It currently houses a database of over 40,000 notes. Since users create their notes and invite others to browse through them, the platform gets natural, organic traffic without any advertising.
Talking to me on how Classmint solves a student’s purpose, Rajan Chandi, Co-Founder at Classmint says,
A lot of the times, student don’t understand the concepts in the Classroom. Sometimes, teachers are not accessible or available. Classmint serves the student in such cases by offering a self-learning tool. 4500+ schools under Avid.org program in US ask their students to create Cornell Notes to get to a good college. We’re solving self-learning using Classmint as a first problem. Secondary problem is access to peer-generated notes. It’s easy for a student to learn from their peer’s notes.
Classmint currently receives most of its visits from the U.S., Spain and India. While most of its traction comes from the U.S., the concept has been gaining momentum in India too. It recently announced a new feature called Groups which allows users to share notes privately among their own group. Once in a group, you can privately share question and answers to certain select questions as per your group’s agenda, and then later work on the same using Classmint’s collaborative note-making platform.
The company, which is currently boot-strapped, is already in talks with multiple investors for a possible angel round. Classmint will soon be launching its own mobile apps, and is also looking to diversify into a first-of-its kind marketplace for study notes. The company aims to secure funds, so as to speed up the diversification and development process.
