Groupsourced educational app Answer Underground launches verified accounts for academics

Today groupsourced educational application Answer Underground has released a new feature today that allows academics to be verified on its platform, allowing those most qualified to be marked as such, helping students better find key information to solve their educational questions.

Answer Underground, a company currently focused on the iOS platform, helps kids in school find the answers to common issues resulting from their educational work. Key to the platform is the ability for students to collaborate with each other to surpass their questions; your CS problem isn’t just your own, it’s more than likely that others have the same difficulty.

By allowing classes and other groups to create rooms on the app that foster collaboration, Answer Underground let’s students work together to better execute their work. If you can recall your days in school, you can understand the attractiveness of the ability to work in harmony to pass certain barriers.

When I was slogging through proofs in university, I could have used the teamwork.

The addition of verified accounts for key academics will allow the platform to differentiate between peer response, and that of a well-credentialed individual. This is not to denigrate the effectiveness of student-to-student work, but the addition of professional input and response enrichment.

Answer Underground operates as you expect a modern mobile application would: push notifications and the like. Interesting to the product is its mobile focus: while readers of this blog likely interact more with desktops and laptops than smartphones for their work tasks, younger folks, for home education is their profession for the time being, mobile is often their main platform.

In the words of the company, this new feature helps “academics certify when correct answers are posted within Answer Underground’s study groups providing a level of validation for users that does not exist elsewhere.”

According to previous reports, engagement appears to be strong, not only among students, but by their educators as well. TechCrunch reported in August of last year that “the response from professors has been positive, because it’s actually making their lives easier.” The goal of the application is not to simply make the process of learning more accessible, but also faster; instead of burning an hour stuck on a niggling question, Answer Underground might help you find the error in your calculation more quickly, and thus help you move forward without wastage.

Study groups are a critical part of education; Answer Underground wants to drag them into the digital, mobile age. Let’s hope this helps kids do better on the SAT.

Top Image Credit: Alberto G.