In classrooms across campus, students are refreshing Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for the latest updates. But Emerson Malca and Pindi Albert, co-founders of StudyRoom, saw the ways social media could help students across the country.

With StudyRoom, students can search for their courses and professors then add themselves into a group that includes other classmates who use StudyRoom. Once logged in, a newsfeed will pop up in a Facebook-like form. Posts include anything from questions to notes from the class. The newsfeed also shows all the classes you have chosen to join on StudyRoom. Class members who are active on StudyRoom can invite their classmates via Facebook or email. 

Malca attended San Francisco State University and earned a degree in computer engineering, while Albert went to Penn State and later left to pursue his interest in educational entrepreneurship.

“It was very clear to us when one day we were helping a friend who is in college with a physics problem and she told us that she tried contacting her classmates but she only had the phone numbers for 2 of them, out of 150 classmates,” Malca said. “We knew there was definitely someone else in her class that run into the exact same problem as her and could definitely help her out and explain it better than anybody else. At that point we decided to start building StudyRoom.”

Students in the Kent State community have found StudyRoom helpful in their studying efforts and to connect with classmates beyond the classroom.

“(StudyRoom) really helps with getting good notes,” freshman integrated math major Anthony DiVito said. “I take notes in class then look on StudyRoom at other people’s notes to see if I missed anything.”

Students can post on their feed to ask about assignments and due dates, and StudyRoom also provides a “thanks” button similar to a “like” button for status posts and comments.

“If you miss a class it’s always nice to go to Study Room and ask what was missed and get the notes,” said Freshman pre-nursing major Alexandra Mallory.

Malca said 300,000 students across the United States currently use StudyRoom, 4,500 of which are Kent State students.

Contact Ashley Kotlenz at [email protected].