If you’ve been reading the blog or our K-Newsletter, you’ve probably been hearing quite a bit about Knovel’s University Challenge (as one of our biggest events of the year, we get excited about it around here! )  The Challenge is a fun contest for undergraduate science & engineering students  to test their knowledge and win and iPad, cash prizes and more!

Still not convinced? Let Kausik Regunath, a Columbia University student and a winner of the 2010 University Challenge, tell you why it definitely pays to play.

1.   I see you played University Challenge in 2010 and scored a gift card. What did you splurge on?

I used it for buying a text-book I needed – not exactly splurging, but Amazon credited me with a couple of dollars to buy some music downloads.  So it was still fun!

2.    How challenging was the University Challenge?? Were you truly tested by our Knovel quiz?

It was quite challenging. Especially because it had questions from many different disciplines like electrical and electronics engineering, properties of chemicals, stress in materials and so on. So students are definitely tested hard by the Knovel quiz. What was really interesting was that even if you have very little knowledge in a particular subject, Knovel is so user-friendly and comprehensive that finding answers to those questions should be pretty straightforward.

3.    Why do you think University Challenge is valuable for students (aside from the free prizes )

The importance of events such as this challenge is that it exposes students to electronic resources like Knovel that are a definite treasure-trove of knowledge. The libraries of most big universities have subscription to facilities like Knovel, Netlibrary, Ovid, Safari, E-brary etc. However students are just not aware of how many e-books they can access via these websites. Moreover, Knovel goes far beyond just having a collection of e-books (which many other sites also have) and actually offers a sophisticated knowledge ecosystem. Until I took this quiz and searched for things like chemical properties of substances, I had no idea that Knovel had such extensive collections of tables and graphs that are so much easier to use than the printed handbooks. So popularizing e-resources and providing an opportunity for learning how to effectively use Knovel makes the University challenge so valuable for students.

4.    Would you recommend The Challenge to your friends?

Definitely. Highly recommended! A chance to win free goodies and learn something really useful – don’t miss this.

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If you’ve already taken the University Challenge, share your experience with us!

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