In Your Class: The Next Big Thing Online

Can our homegrown site beat out Facebook and Blackboard on campus?By Denai BrownHave you heard of the social networking website Inyourclass.com? You should. It was started in 2009 by four friends at CCNY and currently has 4,500 members.“It was created so that students can actually do work,” says Arber Ruci, one of the creators and the site’s chief executive officer. “Some students have a problem with procrastination so the website was created as a learning system that would be both different from Blackboard and Facebook.”Inyourclass also provides an easier way for students and faculty to communicate. For example, students can see what material was covered in class, watch videos, review coursework, chat and interact while professors are also on it. Some CCNY faculty use it instead of Blackboard, which often has glitches that leads professors to postpone due dates and rely on different websites to get information to students.Says Teona Lazashvili, a CCNY junior: “This site is helpful for discussions and easy access to information needed for a specific course that one is taking.“It is easy to access and classmates are easily found as well as teachers,’’ adds Melkol Amare, an economics major.At CCNY, inyourclass is gaining users and not far behind Facebook and Linked-in in popularity. “When it comes to competitors, we have a small sample size, but when it comes to the key measure of social sites “page view per visitor” Facebook is at 15, next is Linkedin at 10, and next is actually us at 8.5” says, Ruci.Still, students argue that inyourclass can’t replace either Facebook or Blackboard, though it has its strong points. “Inyourclass is not the next Facebook and is not a replacement for Blackboard, rather it is a new part of the channel lineup for students” says Kevin Foster, a professor in the CCNY Economics department.Abdul Sharif, a CCNY alum, agrees. “Blackboard will continue to be used for what it is supposed to be used for,” he says. “But inyourclass will also keep improving.”Despite its growing success, many students are not making use of the website because they do not know about it. Andre Fields, a City College senior, decided to try the new website two semesters ago. “I can see all the ways in which it would be extremely useful but when I was on it there weren't that many people making use of it,” he says.Ruci says that he and others who are working on the site, see great potential down the road. “Inyourclass is in a work in progress,” he explains. “The goal of the website is to just spread the word better and market better because we know it works.”