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Student Housing Platform Amber Raises $21M to Expand Its Operations Globally

By
Jaswinder Singh
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Amber, a long-term accommodation booking platform for students, has announced that it has secured $21 million in its first round of institutional funding, led by Mumbai-based private equity firm Gaja Capital. The deal included $18.5 million in new equity and the remaining venture debt from Lighthouse Canton and Stride Ventures.

With this financing round, the company intends to expand globally and enhance its offerings for property managers and students. It also hopes to grow its operations further by hiring more suppliers and property managers while addressing demand from both international and domestic students. It plans to invest in product innovation.

Co-founded by Saurabh Goel and Madhur Gujar in 2017, Amber simplifies the housing process for students globally by providing verified listings and integrated booking experience with virtual property tours and expert assistance. The platform enables transactions between a property manager and customers but only plays an operational role in property maintenance. It also assists students with loan services, discounts on flight bookings and guarantor services. The startup has partnered with study abroad consultancies and loan providers to attract student demand.

Speaking about the company, Co-founder & CEO of Amber, Saurabh Goel, said:

At Amber, we have been deeply obsessed with solving the house-hunting process, starting with students. Having experienced this first-hand, we noticed a significant gap in the customer experience for a need as “fundamental” as housing. We have seen technology-led disruption in other sectors, but surprisingly, the house-hunting process remains archaic.

The firm, headquartered in Pune, claims to have expanded into Australia, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It has witnessed over 1 million monthly visits to its website and mobile apps. The company has also developed an AI-based dynamic pricing engine and dashboard tools to help property managers streamline operations and maximize revenue.

Commenting on the fundraising, Gopal Jain, Managing Partner of Gaja Capital, said:

Amber exemplifies a unique combination of tech-driven scale, high growth, profitability, and capital efficiency that is exceedingly rare in today’s market. The global increase in student enrolments underpinned by a long-term study abroad trend is fuelling the organized student housing market.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

AI Video creator platform Colossyan Raises $22M in Series A Funding

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
AI Video creator platform Colossyan Raises $22M in Series A Funding
AI Video creator platform Colossyan Raises $22M in Series A Funding

Colossyan, a creator of AI video for workplace learning, recently announced that it has raised $22 million (£17 million) in its Series A funding round led by Lakestar, with participation from Launchub, Day One Capital, and Emerge Education. With the funding, the company plans to hire significantly in North American sales, client support, and R&D.

Founded by Dominik Kovacs, Colossyan aims to help creators by building technologies that can eliminate manual work, give humans extra abilities, and ultimately help billions of people around the globe to learn and be informed. The platform has pioneered features for training video creation, such as side-view avatars, real-time video generation, and the ability to produce multiple videos simultaneously.

Speaking about the latest development, Founder & CEO of Colossyan, Dominik Kovacs, said:

Colossyan is dedicated to democratising knowledge with affordable, interactive video creation, rapidly responding to consumer feedback. Our commitment goes beyond making videos; we enable the creation of interactive learning experiences tailored to our customer’s needs, and we pride ourselves on our speed in adapting and learning. This agility has been crucial to our growth. Our partnership with Lakestar, aligning with our vision, is a significant step in not just revolutionising video production but doing so quickly to meet the growing demand for interactive learning, an essential aspect of our AI research.

Over the past year, the startup has experienced by 600% year on year and currently includes clients such as Porsche, Vodafone, and Paramount. Its team has grown significantly, from 15 to 45 employees over the last year.

Commenting on the fundraising, Akis Bratsos, Partner at Lakestar, stated:

This investment emphasises our confidence in the AI-driven corporate learning market and Colossyan’s robust path to revolutionise this field. Colossyan’s exceptional growth and distinctive features position the company as a true frontrunner, reshaping the future of corporate education. We are pleased to embark on this journey with the Colossyan team.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle Teachers – Let your students manage their studies with Kanban Boards

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle Teachers - Let your students manage their studies with Kanban Boards
Moodle Teachers - Let your students manage their studies with Kanban Boards

Moodle is the world’s most popular open source learning management system with more than 400 million users in the world. The Moodle Plugins offers the most flexible way of extending Moodle LMS functionality to meet the demands of a specific learning way. In this post, we will discuss about the Kanban Board plugin and how you can use it in your Moodle course.

The Kanban Board Moodle plugin allows you to add the Kanban boards in your Moodle courses. A Kanban Board is pretty useful agile project management tool designed to help visualize work, limit work-in-progress, and maximize efficiency (or flow).

With the Kanban Board Moodle plugin you can create several types of boards:

  • The course board, accessible to everyone who has access to the activity (unless it’s disabled in favour of personal boards).
  • Personal boards for each user: Can be enabled in the activity settings
  • Group boards: Can be enabled in the activity settings (visible or separate groups)
  • Template boards: Anyone with the manage boards capability can copy an existing board as a template board. Any board created in the Kanban activity afterwards will be copied from this board (no user data is copied).

The Board support different columns and cards can be created & assigned to other users also. Due dates are also added to your calendar. Columns can be set to automatically close cards when moved there.

Overall the Kanban Board plugin can be used in your Moodle course to provide the students a collaborative way to work on something such as an assignment as a group work. It can also be used to let them manage their own studies by using their own personal Kanban boards.

You can download the Kanban Board Moodle plugin from the official plugins repository here.

What are the other useful Moodle plugins which you are using? Please share with us in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Irish Online Learning Platform Examfly Raises $1.62M in Seed Round

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Irish Online Learning Platform Examfly Raises .62M in Seed Round

Examfly, a Dublin-based educational technology company that developed a learning platform for the professional services sector, has recently raised $1.62 million (€1.5 million) in a seed round led by various previous entrepreneurs and tech leaders, including Scale Ireland chair Brian Caulfield. The Irish startup intends to use the latest financing to continue developing its platform, refine its generative AI production engine, and expand internationally. It also plans to increase its workforce by five by the end of the year.

Founded in 2020 by Deirdre Lyons, a chartered tax advisor and former wealth management executive at Davy, Examfly builds interactive learning technologies for anyone preparing for professional exams in finance, accounting or taxation, and continuous training and development of employees within firms. The Examfly model recognizes the challenges the busy 21st-century student faces and helps work around them. Working with subject matter experts, software developers, animators, and game designers, the platform delivers a learning experience optimized for skill acquisition and reinforcement.

Speaking about the company, Founder & CEO of Examfly, Deirdre Lyons, said:

Examfly is transforming the learning model for students taking professional exams and those undertaking training in finance, with highly positive feedback and encouraging statistics on pass rate improvements.

Its clientele now includes well-known industry brands such as Deloitte, EY Grant Thornton, and Vialto Partners. Most recently, it signed a two-year deal with PwC in the UK. Trusted by Big 4 corporations and significant educational institutions, the company has also received positive feedback from students, who believe it makes studying faster and more enjoyable.

Lyons added:

2023 was a challenging year for business and the startup community, and we’re very pleased with the success of this funding round. This latest investment reflects the strong confidence our investors have in our product. They see our success and share our ambition.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle Teachers – How to Allow Student Assignments to be Graded by Multiple Graders

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle Teachers - How to Allow Student Assignments to be Graded by Multiple Graders
Moodle Teachers - How to Allow Student Assignments to be Graded by Multiple Graders

Assignment activity in Moodle LMS allows you to collect students submissions on the given topic which can be graded. It allows you to let students submit the online text, upload a file or even grade offline work in Moodle. In this post we will see how you can add multiple graders for assignment submissions in your Moodle course.

The Assignment activity is generally graded by the courses teachers. However, by using the Multiple Graders Moodle plugin you can assign multiple graders for an assignment activity. You can download the Multiple Graders Moodle plugin from the official plugins repository here.

Once installed you can see a new grading method in Assignment activity settings named as Multiple Graders. When you choose Multiple Graders as grading method and save the assignment, you need to define new form definition which includes the details of other teachers and how it will be graded.

The form includes:

  • A list of graders, these will be allowed to second-grade the assignment and will also receive notifications of where second grading was requested.
  • grading criteria : rich text displayed at the top of the advanced grading method as a guide to teacher on how/what to grade
  • the method of auto calculating the next grade and outcomes. So when a second grader arrives to grade, the outcomes and the grade is automatically set based on this method, they only need to change what they don’t agree with:
    • last previous grade: copies the data from the previous grader
    • minimum previous grade: copies the minimum from all previous grades
    • maximum previous grade: copies the maximum from all previous grades
    • average previous grade: sets the average values from all previous grades
  • blind marking: if checked, graders don’t see the grades from previous graders
  • show second graders notes to students: if checked students will see along with the final grade also the intermediary grades. (Every grader may choose whether their notes are visible to students as well or only to other teachers)

How the Multiple Grading for assignment will work:

Once you have setup the grading form, then:

  • Select an assignment setup with Multiplte graders
  • First teacher that grades becomes “the first grader” which acts like an owner of that assignment/person grade. They are the ones to assign the final grade by checking the button/checkbox “publish grade”.
  • After first teacher is done grading, they need to use the checkboxes to decide:- if the notes they added should be visible to students or not- if they want to ask for second graders- if the grade is final or not
  • If they requested second grading, all teachers defined as second graders will receive a moodle notification with a link to the Assignment
  • Second graders after adding their grade and notes may choose- if the notes they added should be visible to students or not- if they want to ask for second graders – this will effectively call to a third grader
  • If they requested second grading, all teachers defined as second graders will receive a moodle notification with a link to the Assignment
  • The first grader can decide at all times the final grade and to publish the grade in the gradebook.
  • Any account can grade only once a certain assignment/user.

Overall the Multiple Graders plugin is a useful grading method for Moodle teachers who are looking for the student assignments to be graded by other teachers.

What are the other useful Moodle plugins you are using? Please share with us in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Adventum Student Living Raises $3M to Support International Educational Opportunities

By
Jaswinder Singh
-

Adventum Student Living (ASL), a study abroad platform that owns the UniAcco, UniCreds, and UniScholars brands, has raised $3 million (INR 24.9 crore) from the Times of India’s strategic investment arm Brand Capital. According to the official announcement, Brand Capital and ASL’s association aims to make overseas education opportunities accessible and reinforce their dedication to academic excellence.

Founded in 2019 by Amit Singh and Sayantan Biswas, Adventum Student Living helps students pursue education abroad. It offers student accommodation, education loans and scholarship programmes to students through UniAcco, UniCreds and UniScholarz, respectively. UniScholars is a platform for test preparation, counselling, university applications, course shortlisting and visa assistance through over 100 expert counsellors. UniCreds provides affordable education loans in multiple currencies, whereas UniAcco helps students find an accommodation of their choice.

Speaking on the fundraising, Founder & Director of Adventum Student Living, Amit Singh, said:

With access to Brand Capital’s extensive resources and existing portfolio, ASL is excited to elevate its business offerings. We are eager to learn and scale alongside marquee industry-leading companies to fulfil dreams of global education for youth across India.

The startup claims to be profitable since its first operation year while growing at 400% year-on-year (YoY). It previously raised $5 million (around Rs 40 crore) in a bridge round led by Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund (CSVP), an investment firm set up by former Reliance Industries executives Abhishek Prasad and Rajiv Vaishnav.

Srini Vudayagiri, the president of Brand Capital, commented:

We are confident our unique investment model will provide the necessary growth for ASL and find increased adoption for its varied solutions.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle Teachers – Make your courses look incredible by using the Tiles Course format

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle Teachers - Make your courses look incredible by using the Tiles Course format
Moodle Teachers - Make your courses look incredible by using the Tiles Course format

Moodle LMS is world’s most popular open source Learning Management System with more than 400 million users around the world. However, there are many users who believe that the Moodle user interface is not modern and lacks cutting edge features. In recent years, Moodle HQ team has done pretty wonderful job by improvising on the user experience in Moodle LMS.

The course format in Moodle terminology refers to the course layout – how the course will appear to your students. By default Moodle comes with four different course format which are Topics, Weekly, Single Course & Social, But they are limited in customization possibilities. This is where the Course format plugins can be useful for you.

Tiles Course format Moodle plugin is very popular among Moodle teachers. The Tiles course format plugin displays course topics as Tiles in a grid rather than as a list. When clicked, tile content is displayed under the tile with an animated transition. The layout adapts to different screen sizes and orientations. Within each tile, activities can also be set to display as “sub-tiles”. For each tile, the teacher can pick an icon from a predefined set, or upload a background photo.

You can download the Tiles Course format plugin from the official plugins repository here. The key features of Tiles course format are:

  • Tiles are used to show course topics and activities
  • Animation is used to expand tiles to reveal content
  • Icons or photos on each tile increase visual appeal
  • Modal windows (animated pop ups) to show content
  • Colours for tiles are customisable
  • Theme compatibility is broad (Boost, Clean, Essential, Moove and Adaptable).
  • Easy to switch into Tiles from other formats (e.g. Topics, Grid) without changing course content
  • User friendly (e.g. tile icons are provided and don’t need to be uploaded)
  • Mobile responsive (adapts to different screen sizes and orientations)
  • Progress shown on tile with % in a circle, or as a fraction

The Tiles course format is Mobile friendly with the tiles adjust themselves to different screen sizes and orientations.

What are the other useful Moodle plugins you are using? Please share with us in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Create Formative Assessments Easily in Moodle using Simple Lesson Plugin

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Create Formative Assessments Easily in Moodle using Simple Lesson Plugin
Create Formative Assessments Easily in Moodle using Simple Lesson Plugin

In online learning world, there is a lot of ways to take the students assessment. Moodle LMS also supports students assessment through various activities such as Quiz, Workshop, Assignment, Lesson etc. In this post we will see how you can make use of Simple lesson Moodle plugin to take formative assessments.

Formative Assessments are generally referred to the test conducted to check the prior knowledge of students on the topic which you are about to teach them. The Simple Lesson Moodle plugin allows you to easily use it for different types of formative assessments. Here are some nice features about the Simple Lesson plugin:

  • Supports adding questions from the question bank
  • Behaviours adaptive, immediate and deferred feedback supported
  • Essay questions supported (manual grading required)
  • Easy to add and then automatically sequence pages
  • Consists of multimedia pages with simple hyperlinked navigation
  • Summary lesson attempt reports for students and teacher’s
  • Manual marking of essay questions, updates to the gradebook.
  • Implements GDPR privacy requests for reporting and deletion of user data
  • Designed for Moodle 4.

You can download the Simple Lesson plugin from the official plugins repository here. Simple lesson allows a number of different strategies or uses in the classroom. As a teacher you can use it to create simple quizzes by using the questions from the Question bank.

It also provides a number of statistics on student answers and attempts, downloadable to csv, you can gain some insights into student learning as you would do for a quiz. It allows you to create content pages as in the Lesson activity but as an advantage you can use the same questions which you have created for the Moodle Quiz.

You can also use it to allow the students to create their own simple lessons to demonstrate their knowledge of a subject and to test their colleagues as a fun activity.

Overall, the simple lesson Moodle plugins allows a pretty useful functionality especially for the courses where you want to create the formative assessments for your students.

What are the other useful Moodle plugins you are using? Please let us know in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

AI-Powered Hiring Startup HireAra Raises $574K in Seed Funding

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
AI-Powered Hiring Startup HireAra Raises $574K in Seed Funding
AI-Powered Hiring Startup HireAra Raises $574K in Seed Funding

HireAra, a B2B SaaS platform powered by AI that assists recruiters in making their brand and candidates stand out to potential clients, recently announced that it has raised $574,000 (€527,000) in seed funding.

Co-founded by Thomas Vose, Alex Owen, Tom Carr and Adam Driver, HireAra has developed a candidate presentation platform that connects with existing workflows. Using the platform, recruiters can upload a candidate’s CV and any additional information to generate attractive branded content about them in seconds. The organization comprises talented, ambitious, enthusiastic, and creative individuals committed to developing world-class recruitment products. Its culture emphasizes collaboration, creativity, and radical transparency. The company strives to create the most excellent products possible and benefit the world.

Speaking about the platform, Co-founder & CEO of HireAra, Thomas Vose, said:

For recruitment agencies, their candidates are their product for recruitment agencies. So, they must present the candidate and their brand in the best light possible. There needs to be room for human error in candidate presentation, as, according to CFA Institute research, a CV with two or more typos will be instantly rejected by over 97 per cent of hiring managers.

HireAra was formed in April 2022 as a spinoff from DigiBlu, an intelligent automation startup. Five existing HireAra customers and numerous experienced recruitment tech angel investors joined the round, with the remaining 45 per cent raised through private crowdfunding.

With this financing, HireAra plans to increase its sales force, launch two new content offerings in 2024, and pursue its mission to modernize the recruiting sector.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle partner Efaktor expands operations in Bulgaria

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle partner Efaktor expands operations in Bulgaria
Moodle partner Efaktor expands operations in Bulgaria

Efaktor – Moodle Certified Premium Partner with more than 10 years of experience, has expanded its operations in Bulgaria to meet the growing demands for Moodle LMS & Moodle Workplace.

The company will offer a comprehensive suite of services to organisations seeking to build a robust online learning environment. Efaktor’s entry into the market fills a critical gap, providing expert consulting, hosting, development, support, course production, and design services tailored to the specific needs of Bulgarian businesses and institutions.

Vigdis Løvås, CEO of Efaktor, said:

Building on our success as the Moodle Certified Premium Partner in Norway, we bring extensive experience and proven expertise in deploying Moodle to the Bulgarian market.

We will be the first Moodle Certified Partner within the country, which puts us in a strategic position for expanding our reach to serve the growing demand for Moodle solutions in the region.

Efaktor is a certified Moodle Certified Premium Partner specialising in providing organisations with the tools and expertise needed to build successful online learning environments. With a team of experienced Moodle professionals spanning Norway and now Bulgaria, Efaktor offers a comprehensive range of services, including hosting, development, training, course production, design, and ongoing consulting support.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

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