Ohio State Students Adopt BetterCampus Extension

A browser extension built to add planning tools to Ohio State's CarmenCanvas has drawn 9,860 student accounts at the university, according to company figures released by CEO and co-founder Jake Silver. The extension, called BetterCampus, added 1,100 new users in the last 30 days and has seven instructor accounts on the platform, Silver said. Silver said the company has spent nothing on marketing at Ohio State.

Grace Neri, a fourth-year medical anthropology student, said she started using the extension during her sophomore organic chemistry course. "I just remember thinking I really wanted that visual of seeing how much I had completed for the week," Neri said. A friend showed her how to download it, and she has used it since.

The extension sits on top of CarmenCanvas and adds assignment planning, calendar syncing, grade scenario analysis, lecture transcription and flashcards. Mia Dimova, a first-year pharmaceutical science student, said she colors her classes differently on the calendar to separate tasks across the week. Amy Scholes, a third-year health science student, set her dashboard to pink. Dimova said more than 100 design styles are available. Neri uses a sidebar progress ring to track remaining work and keeps notes on paper tests in the planner. Scholes said the extension shows assignment due dates and times that CarmenCanvas does not surface directly. She also described a workaround for proctored exams: "When we have to do Honorlock or LockDown Browser, I have to disable it and delete it, then redownload it when I am done, so that's annoying." Silver said the extension includes Quiz Safe Mode and Temporarily Disable Mode, which shut off its functions during a quiz without requiring removal, and that the tool also runs as a website. "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," Silver said.

Silver said the company builds from student feedback because many of his employees are students. Students post customized dashboards on TikTok and Instagram. "It's just like an organic flywheel. I do not 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 began as a Chrome tool for Canvas and now runs on Edge, Firefox and Safari. It also works with Brightspace, Blackboard, Google Classroom and Moodle. Silver said a pet feature will ship in the coming weeks: each student receives a digital pet they can name, decorate and hatch. Pets enter a shared study space with other students' pets. Students earn coins by completing activities such as submitting work on time or writing a note, and the coins buy furniture and accessories for the pet and its room. Silver said the company plans focus groups for the feature.

Neri said the extension could help incoming first-year students who have not settled on a method for managing time or studying for exams.