Engageli, a startup looking to build an inclusive digital learning platform, announced it has raised $14.5 million in seed funding.
The company, founded in 2020, is developing a learning platform designed to “optimize student success and deliver engaging teaching and learning experiences across a broad spectrum of needs for higher education.”
In a press release, Engageli said that the rapid move to distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a drop in student success. Engageli noted that this drop in success specifically impacts “the most vulnerable individuals” and is “further contributing to social inequality across education.” To address those challenges, Engageli is focused on developing a platform that:
- Fosters deep engagement between instructors and students and course content, both in class and online;
- Creates a flexible learning environment that enables organic and seamless peer-to-peer collaboration and social interaction;
- Increases student and teacher success via the collection of analytics to improve the learning experience over time; and
- Promotes an inclusive learning environment that is universally accessible and that enables instructors to interact with the students who need it most.
“Human connection, interaction, and inclusion are critical ingredients for engagement and transformative learning in any classroom, and Engageli was built on those fundamentals,” added Daphne Koller, co-founder and board member of Engageli and Stanford University adjunct professor. “The Engageli platform gives students and teachers a place to communicate, exchange ideas, work out problems, and learn content at a deeper level.”
The Engageli platform, which is currently being piloted at a handful of higher ed institutions, encompasses a host of unique tools, designed to “enrich the inclusive digital learning experience.” Tools available on the platform include table groups and dynamic breakout sessions; integration of polls, quizzes, and interactive exercises to test knowledge of course content; and gallery view and fixed seating with real time engagement data for instructors to better interact with students.
“To achieve real change in online learning live sessions, we were looking for platforms specifically created to accomplish meaningful and dynamic class interactions,” said Norma Scagnoli, assistant dean for Education Innovation and chief learning officer at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who is currently piloting the platform. “Engageli … is an authentic, purpose-built learning platform with considerable functionality designed to drive student success and better learning outcomes, while also facilitating the instructor experience in this challenging instructional setting.”
