Joshua Imhof | news editor

As the United States plunged into the COVID-19 pandemic and local governments closed schools across the country, students scrambled to adapt to a new learning environment.

Instead of meeting in person, teachers spoke to students through small boxes on computer screens and assigned homework on learning management systems (LMS) like Canvas or Blackboard.

George Mills, a University of Maryland graduate and junior in high-school at the time the lockdowns began in March 2020, said it was hard to rely on these platforms.

“This teacher would post assignments on Canvas, but then she wouldn’t tell us about the assignments,” Mills said. “I got a bunch of zeros on stuff.”

From this struggle came an idea for a better way to interact with these systems, Mills said.

A better Canvas.

“I got creative with it and started adding a bunch of other features,” Mills said.

Over the next few years, Mills developed a Chrome extension that students could use to customize their LMS with things like dark mode, themes and new ways to track assignments so they did not slip through the cracks.

This extension, now called BetterCampus, currently has more than 2 million student users, according to its website.

“It’s really such a blessing,” Mills said. “I never would have imagined this.”

BetterCampus is used by students at over 500 schools, according to the platform’s website, and Duquesne is no different.

Abbey Miklos, a freshman nursing student, found out about the program through a friend.

“It’s really important that it tracks everything for me, and I like that you can see your grades on the classes themselves,” she said. “It definitely helps keep me organized.”

In addition to the practical benefits, Miklos also takes advantage of the customizable theme options. She has replaced her default class icons with GIFs of the Rizzler and the Costco Guys, popular social media influencers.

She said keeping things light has helped her stay motivated when classes get difficult.

“It’s cool that people can make it their own and romanticize school,” she said. “School has become such a dreadful thing for a lot of people, so it kind of gives a little bit of a just fun look at school things.”

Initially, Mills developed the program as a way for himself and close friends to keep track of assignments and make learning online more interesting. But when he was applying to the University of Maryland, he posted it on Reddit to gain more users and include it on his resume.

From there, it took off, eventually catching the attention of Jake Silver, Vanderbilt graduate and now CEO of BetterCampus. Silver, who ran an educational consulting company at the time, heard of Mills’ platform through one of the students he worked with.

Immediately, he was interested.

“I saw potential to go beyond Canvas,” he said. “When I saw that nobody’s marketing this thing… imagine what a little nurture and love and watering and sunlight could do.”

From there, Silver reached out to Mills and the two began working to grow the company.

“I kind of saw us as like a yin and a yang. I’m kind of the business guy, and George is the tech guy,” Silver said.

Since then, the two have worked to grow the company and branch out into new features. The extension offers flashcard-style study sets, AI-powered transcription for lecture notes and even a virtual pet that levels up as students finish assignments.

Silver said that the young demographics of his company keep it innovating.

“Half of our team are students. I’m the oldest on our team, and I’m 26 years old. Our average age is 23,” Silver said. “Our voice of the student is very, very strong and clear.”

He also believes that this youthful perspective separates BetterCampus from the companies they are creating extensions for, and that people will keep using his platform even if those companies develop similar tools.

“I think there’s skill and expertise differences that make me more confident that they won’t,” Silver said. “We’re really, really young and good at listening to our students. So we’re gonna move quicker … both because we can gather student data on what they want quicker than they can, and we are also a lot leaner, so we can build a lot quicker.”

In the future, Mills and Silver hope they can begin selling BetterCampus to universities so they can distribute it to students themselves. They expect their growth to continue.

“I’d love to make this a huge company and really affect a lot of people’s lives,” Mills said. “I think that would be super cool.”

Joshua Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu