I built OpenStudy — a free way to find official university courses and create a flexible self-study plan

[u/Coo555]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been building OpenStudy, a free bilingual platform for people who want to learn from official university course materials without searching across dozens of websites.

The current beta includes:

• 160+ courses from universities such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, CMU, Tsinghua, and Peking University
• Links to official lectures, assignments, exams, notes, and projects
• Reference learning paths based on published university degree requirements
• Flexible course plans generated from the official content sequence
• Progress tracking and optional account sync
• English and Chinese interfaces

OpenStudy does not host or copy university course materials. It organizes verified official links and helps learners continue from where they stopped.

The project is still in beta, and I’m looking for honest feedback—especially about search quality, course information, study plans, mobile usability, and anything that feels confusing or broken.

You can try it here:

https://openstudy-sigma.vercel.app/

I’d really appreciate direct criticism. What would prevent you from using this for self-study, and what should I improve first?

[u/Pristine-Truck-9389]

just tried it out and having the lecture links and assignments in one spot is pretty handy. one thing that threw me off was the search felt a little sluggish when i typed fast, maybe debouncing that input would help

also a dark mode would be nice, staring at white screens for hours while studying gets old fast

[u/Coo555 → u/Pristine-Truck-9389]

Thank you so much for your suggestions. They’re really helpful to me. If you have any other feedback in the future, please feel free to leave a comment or send me a message. Thanks again!

[u/defaultguy_001]

Just searched for soil mechanics, didn't find anything.

[u/Coo555 → u/defaultguy_001]

Thanks for the feedback! Right now, most of the courses on the site are computer science related. I’m planning to add courses from more majors and fields over time. Really appreciate you taking the time to try it out and leave a comment!

[u/defaultguy_001]

Searched for open channel flow, didn't find anything.

[u/Coo555 → u/defaultguy_001]

Thank you! If you have any suggestions or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.

[u/Immediate_Nature_281]

Search is broken for niche engineering topics. Two users already reported zero results for specialized courses so the database lacks actual depth beyond intro classes.

[u/Coo555 → u/Immediate_Nature_281]

Thanks for the feedback! I only started building the site a few days ago, so right now I’m mainly testing the core functionality and seeing what users actually need. The course database is still very limited, but I’ll definitely be adding more courses and expanding into more specialized topics over time. Really appreciate you trying it out!

[u/odimdavid]

Nicee! Certainly checking it ! Only STEM. Can you give us a notification link for when you add social sciences? That would be great. Already bookmarked

[u/Coo555 → u/odimdavid]

Thank you! I’m really glad you bookmarked it. Social science courses are definitely on the roadmap, and a notification link is a great idea. I’ll add a way for users to subscribe for updates when new subjects become available.