Ohio State Students Adopt BetterCampus Extension With No Marketing Push

BetterCampus, a browser extension that modifies Ohio State's CarmenCanvas system, reports 9,860 student accounts at the university, seven instructor accounts, and 1,100 new users in the last 30 days. CEO and co-founder Jake Silver said the company spent nothing to acquire them. "I don't market either, so the fact that we had almost 10,000 users at [Ohio State] with zero marketing is crazy and means we built something students truly love," Silver said.

The extension adds assignment planning, calendar syncing, grade scenario analysis, AI lecture transcription, and flashcards to the Canvas interface. It also allows users to alter the dashboard's appearance. Mia Dimova, a first-year pharmaceutical science student, said she uses the calendar to sort schoolwork by color. "There are 100 or more different styles you can choose for designs," Dimova said. Amy Scholes, a third-year health science student, set her dashboard to pink.

Grace Neri, a fourth-year medical anthropology student, began using the platform during a difficult organic chemistry course. She said she uses the progress ring on the Canvas sidebar to track outstanding work. "I mainly use the sidebar [progress ring], but I will use it to organize notes," Neri said. Scholes said she relies on the extension to surface assignment deadlines. "Without the extension, it doesn't clearly show on Canvas when your assignments are due, and now I can clearly click on assignments and see when they're due and what time," Scholes said.

Silver said the company builds features based on input from student employees. Students post screenshots of customized dashboards on TikTok and Instagram, which Silver described as an "organic flywheel." He said, "We're really good at building stuff that kids care about." Silver added, "I am not that much older than [most students], and our whole team is really young."

An AI pet feature is scheduled for release in the coming weeks. Each student receives a digital pet that they can name, decorate, and hatch. The pet enters a digital study space and can study alongside other students' pets. Students earn coins by completing activities such as submitting work on time or taking a note, which can be spent on furniture and accessories for the pet and its room.

The extension does not run inside Honorlock or LockDown Browser testing environments. Scholes said she disables and reinstalls the software around those sessions. Silver said BetterCampus offers Quiz Safe Mode and Temporarily Disable Mode, which shut off the extension during quizzes without uninstalling it. The extension also operates as a standalone website, and Silver said, "A lot of students aren't aware of these options yet, and we want to make sure they know they don't have to delete BetterCampus just to take a test."

The software began as a Chrome extension for Canvas and now runs on Edge, Firefox, and Safari. It also supports Brightspace, Blackboard, Google Classroom, and Moodle. Neri said the tool would be useful for incoming first-year students. "I think it's a great resource, and I think it could help a lot of people organize, especially people who are incoming first-years [if] they haven't figured out how to manage their time or how to study for exams yet," Neri said.