Note-sharing marketplace Flashnotes wound down

The course notes-sharing marketplace Luvo, formerly known as Flashnotes, has been wound down, Cengage Learning has confirmed.

Cengage made an investment in the start-up - which allowed students who had taken the best course notes to sell them to others -  in 2014, integrating it with its e-learning system MindTap. The publisher said then that it was looking "for new ways to engage students" and "enhance the higher ed learning experience in a way that reflects the way students work and study, with content generated by the students themselves."

Cengage chief product officer Jim Donohue has confirmed the winding down of Flashnotes to education site EdSurge. "It was a great idea, but the amount of work involved in finding students on each campus to share these notes was difficult," he told the site. "The acquisition costs of getting these writers was very high."

A new model by which students could buy and sell notes for popular education couses offered across a number of different schools did not work out for Luvo, EdSurge noted.