Welcome to Open Path University – Week 1 Update
Welcome to Open Path University’s weekly update.
I am CBFreyja Art, and I serve as the Dean, Professor, and Learner at OPU. This marks the end of the first week of learning, and I want to walk through what we are doing here and what I’ve learned so far.
At its core, Open Path University is an exploration. The goal is to figure out how to create a learning path that gives you the depth and structure of a college education without the cost. No subscriptions, no FAFSA, no jumping through administrative hoops. Just learning, built deliberately and approached seriously.
That said, this process does have some requirements. The first is access to the internet or data. This entire system is built online, so consistent access is essential. Without it, the structure falls apart quickly.
The second requirement is resolve. This is self-driven learning, which means there is no external system forcing you forward. You have to be willing to show up, stay consistent, and push yourself even when there is no deadline hanging over you. That requires a certain mindset going in.
You will also need an AI assistant. I personally am using ChatGPT. I like it because it can remember what we have already built and continue from there. It is not perfect. It sometimes pulls context from other projects, and it tends to be very literal unless you guide it otherwise. Mine is named Willow, and working with her has already become a key part of the process.
A printer is helpful, but not required. I’ll talk more about that in my Patreon Premium level.
Finally, you need at least a general idea of what you want to get out of this. You don’t need a perfectly polished plan, but your AI assistant needs direction in order to build something meaningful. The clearer you are about your goals, the better the structure will be.
For me, that starting point was psychology. I already have a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, so I wanted to move into something completely different. I also live with multiple mental health conditions, and I have a genuine interest in understanding how my brain works—and sometimes doesn’t. Psychology felt like both a practical and personal choice.
Once I knew what I wanted to study, the next step was finding the right platforms. For this to work, the courses need to be designed at a college level. That means using platforms that offer real academic content, not just surface-level summaries.
The platforms I explored included Alison, edX, Coursera, MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Culture, Iversity, YouTube, and Khan Academy.Not all of them worked equally well for me.
Open Culture and Iversity felt too scattered and inconsistent. They function more like aggregators than structured learning environments, which made it difficult to build a clear path forward. MIT OpenCourseWare, while incredibly rich in material, lacked guidance. It provides a massive amount of content, but very little direction on how to move through it as a cohesive course.
edX offers strong, high-quality material, but its audit access is limited to about three weeks per course. That creates a time constraint, but it also makes it possible to structure learning in focused blocks. Alison, on the other hand, stood out immediately. It offers a large number of in-depth courses with built-in quizzes and tests, and many of them are organized into modules that feel similar to traditional college classes.
With those platforms in mind, I turned to AI to build a curriculum. My first attempt was asking for a full psychology degree plan using those specific sites. It worked, but it didn’t feel quite right. So I adjusted and asked for a more general structure—something that mirrored a college-level education without locking me into a rigid path. That gave me a solid foundation to work from. From there, I chose my starting courses.
I decided to approach introductory psychology from multiple angles to see how different platforms handled the same subject. I selected an Introduction to Clinical Psychology course through edX and paired it with a broader “Diploma in Psychology” track on Alison. The Alison course is broken into one- to two-hour modules designed to stretch across about twelve weeks, which aligns closely with a traditional semester structure. Meanwhile, the three-week window on edX allows me to focus on one course at a time in a more intensive way. This combination created something that felt very close to a real course load.
But something still felt off. Coming from an online bachelor’s program, I knew what a full degree structure looked like, and this wasn’t quite there yet. So I went back and looked at actual university psychology programs. I reviewed required courses and, just as importantly, electives.
That’s when I realized what was missing. Electives matter. They give you space to explore something outside your core field, and more importantly, they keep you engaged. Not everything should feel like work. So I added a digital art elective to my plan using Alison courses. I decided that one to two hours per week felt appropriate for something like that. It’s enough to make progress without overwhelming the core workload. I’ll be starting that next week.
Around the same time, I noticed another major gap. There was no homework. No papers. No projects. No meaningful tests beyond what the platforms provided. That’s a problem. Listening to lectures or reading material is not enough to make information stick. Real learning requires application.
So I went back to Willow and asked for a 50-question multiple-choice test based on the edX course and the module I had completed. I also proposed a topic for a short paper and asked for a grading rubric.
That’s where things got interesting. I scored 100% on the test, which makes sense since I had taken similar coursework years ago. But the paper came back as an 86. Willow graded it hard, breaking everything down against the rubric. At one point, she even suggested parts of it sounded like AI-generated writing, which was honestly hilarious considering I hadn’t used AI to write it at all. When I pushed back and pointed out that I was effectively a week-one learner, I asked her to reconsider the grading from that perspective. After that discussion, the grade came up to a 90. I hadn’t planned on tracking grades, but now I think I will. It adds another layer of accountability and makes the process feel more real.
One more adjustment came from reviewing university structures. Most psychology programs include a language requirement, often spanning multiple semesters. I already use Duolingo, so I decided to formalize that into the curriculum. My baseline is one lesson and one review session per day, with the option to do more. I also found a supplemental language course on Alison and plan to spend about fifteen minutes on that regularly.
At this point, the system is starting to take shape. The flexibility is one of its strongest features. If a course is too difficult, you can step back and build up to it. If an elective isn’t working, you can change it. If a core class doesn’t fit, you can find another course covering the same material. But that flexibility comes with a warning. If you drift too far from your intended curriculum, it becomes very easy to spend a lot of time learning without actually progressing toward your goal. Structure still matters. The freedom is there, but it works best when it’s used intentionally.
That’s where things stand at the end of week one. The system is not perfect yet, but it’s no longer just an idea. It’s becoming something structured, something testable, and something that can be repeated and improved. Next week, we start refining it further.
— CBFreyja Art
Dean, Professor, and Learner
Open Path University
