About

Hi! I'm Lachlan MacPhee, a Monash University student who created The Better Handbook to address the challenges around finding units you'll like. I noticed that while the handbook has important information, it's hard to search through and doesn't capture the real student experience. The Better Handbook aims to bridge this gap by providing advanced search functionality, peer insights about workload, teaching quality, and overall unit experience.

Shoutout to Sai whose work to develop the handbook scraper inspired me to start this project. I used some of his scraping techniques to write my own import system. Another shoutout to the MonSTAR team for giving me the idea and go-ahead to create an independent, open-source alternative.

The Better Handbook is completely open source, meaning anyone can view, contribute to, or learn from its code. I believe in transparency and community-driven development, which is why the entire project is available on GitHub.

This platform is designed exclusively for Monash students, requiring a valid Monash student email to participate. This ensures that reviews come from actual students who have taken the units they're reviewing.