EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
PRnewswire | April 06, 2023
Learneo, Inc., an ambitious new platform of productivity and learning businesses and technologies, today announced its acquisition of German-founded LanguageTool, a multilingual writing platform for English, Spanish, and 30 other languages. This acquisition adds to Learneo's robust suite of writing solutions, while also advancing the company's larger international expansion strategy.
"We are committed to supporting builder-driven businesses that help people learn and do more, faster, better, and more affordably—wherever learning occurs," said Andrew Grauer, CEO of Learneo. "The LanguageTool business fits squarely in our investment thesis and accelerates our mission thanks to their values-aligned and ambitious co-founders, their broad customer reach of B2C and B2B clients across the globe, and their unique language and AI expertise."
Globally, most people communicate in more than one language today. Employers are increasingly expecting their employees to engage with colleagues, partners, and customers in multiple languages. In the U.S., for example, 9 out of 10 U.S. employers have reported that they rely on U.S.-based employees with language skills other than English.
Born out of an interest in helping professionals communicate in an increasingly global world, Daniel Naber started LanguageTool as a part of his diploma thesis while studying computational linguistics in 2003. Naber spent many years building LanguageTool in his free time, initially as an open-source project and later as a business when he joined forces with Christopher Blum. Blum had previously founded the spell checking platform, Spellboy, and the two decided to collaborate and unify their experience by co-founding LanguageTool as a business. Today, LanguageTool boasts over 60,000 paying subscribers, including professionals and enterprise clients, and millions more free users across Europe and Latin America.
"Having built LanguageTool over the course of the last 20 years, it has been exciting for us to find a partner so clearly aligned with our mission who also understands our advanced technology and can support our continued innovation in a moment of rapid technological evolution," said Naber. "Joining the Learneo team and having the ability to work alongside talent with phenomenal writing and AI expertise to accelerate our vision is a dream come true. We are deeply motivated by the possibilities that lie ahead!"
With this acquisition, Learneo now comprises seven distinct business lines: CliffsNotes, Course Hero, LanguageTool, LitCharts, QuillBot, Scribbr, and Symbolab. Individually, and together, Learneo's platform of businesses is pioneering advances in a wide range of applications for emergent technologies, including the use of AI to improve people's written communications, reading, and math skills, whether they are in school, a professional work environment, or simply navigating everyday life. Most recently, QuillBot announced the addition of an AI-augmented translator to its platform, allowing users to translate complex texts and better understand the nuances of sentence structure, word choice, and verb conjugation.
"In an ever-more-globalized, asynchronous work environment, accessible multilingual expertise for written communication is in high demand," said Rohan Gupta, CEO of QuillBot and head of Learneo's writing vertical. "Daniel, Christopher and the LanguageTool team have built something truly unique, and I am excited for us to build together, to evolve each of our product lines across Learneo's writing vertical, and to advance the international writing industry at large."
About Learneo
Learneo is pioneering a platform of productivity and learning businesses. The platform of businesses includes CliffsNotes, the original and iconic study guide company; Course Hero, an online learning platform of academic resources; LitCharts, a creator of literature resources; QuillBot, an AI-powered writing companion; Scribbr, a multilingual academic proofreading service, and Symbolab, an AI-based mathematics resource.
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CORPORATE LEARNING SYSTEMS
iMocha | April 13, 2023
iMocha, the world's leading skills intelligence and skills assessment platform launches project-based assessments to its growing portfolio of assessment types. It is built for talent development teams to gather whether employees are skill-fit and ready to be deployed on projects and determine ROI of learning programs.
Today, tech assessments are usually done via single-task coding assessments, whiteboard interviews, and MCQs but that's seldom enough to gauge project-readiness of employees or know the effectiveness of the upskilling programs. Especially for job profiles like front-end developer, back-end developer, full-stack developer, assessments that go beyond algorithms, syntax, and logic are required. iMocha's project-based assessments help talent professionals overcome these challenges and determine skill readiness, including problem-solving skills, domain-specific skills, contextual understanding, and ability to think through a project.
In August 2022, the beta version of iMocha Projects was deployed for iMocha's existing customers that included enterprises and learning platforms. Through the project-based assessments, L&D teams were able to automate time-consuming, manual evaluations that could be subject to bias. Further they also received detailed skills analytics about their employees – which helped in creating accurate and personalized learning paths. Some of the most popular skill sets beta users utilized were ReactJS, Data Science and Machine Learning, Java Spring Boot, MySQL, and more.
Sujit Karpe, CTO and co-founder of iMocha, explained, "This is iMocha's version of capstone projects: we provide the data, the problem statement, and essentially everything required to successfully work on a project. Often, coding assessments fell short in determining real-life skills; they also cannot handle multiple project files like ReactJS, Angular, Jupyter Lab, and more. With iMocha projects, talent development leaders can bridge the gap between experiential learning and hands-on knowledge application by evaluating employees on real-world challenges, similar to what they would be facing on the job."
He continued, "With iMocha Projects, talent leaders will be able to show true value gained via their L&D programs and measure training effectiveness objectively."
About iMocha
iMocha is a skills intelligence and assessment platform that enables talent leaders to make smarter talent decisions with its skills-first insights. 500+ organizations across 70+ countries trust the platform to acquire job-fit talent faster and to measure the ROI from their talent development initiatives. It empowers talent teams with the largest skill library with 2500+ assessments, AI-LogicBox (AI-based pseudo-coding simulator), AI-EnglishPro (AI-powered language analyzer), skill benchmarking, upskilling dashboard, talent analytics, proctoring, fraud detection, and custom assessment consulting, etc.
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CORPORATE EDUCATION AND TRAINING
StrongMind | March 21, 2023
StrongMind recently earned the 1EdTech™ certification for OneRoster® 1.1 for its StrongMind Rostering product.
With OneRoster, schools can securely and reliably exchange roster information, course resources, and grades between learning tools, platforms and systems, saving educators time in their already busy days. Using OneRoster to reduce the administrative burdens of ensuring the technology works, gives educators the space and time to leverage their tools to create more impactful and personalized learning experiences.
StrongMind is invested in the mission of 1EdTech, as a Contributing Member of the member-led, non-profit ed tech organization that is accelerating the digital transformation of learning. As such, StrongMind prioritizes privacy and security for student data and interoperability among systems, leading to ease of use for StrongMind products by schools.
StrongMind Rostering helps teachers and administrators easily share student information between different education programs, such as class rosters, grades and enrollment data. With StrongMind Rostering, districts and schools can save time and reduce errors because it utilizes the 1EdTech One Roster specification, making it easy to use and ensuring security of student information. Schools can say goodbye to manually transferring data between systems and hello to seamless information exchange with StrongMind Rostering.
"We are excited to announce the adoption of the OneRoster specification for our StrongMind Rostering product, which will enhance our product's interoperability and streamline data management for educators, ultimately improving student outcomes," said Derek Neighbors, Senior Vice President Technology, StrongMind.
"To earn this certification, StrongMind had to put in the work and not only say they complied with the OneRoster standards but prove they made it work," said 1EdTech Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Rob Abel. "With this certification, it will be easier for StrongMind's customers to get the data they need when and where they need it."
About StrongMind
StrongMind partners with schools for forward-thinking solutions to address unique challenges. With engaging digital curriculum and SEL, a suite of edtech tools, services, and clear insights, we maximize student achievement and help schools thrive. With multiple Digital Promise Research-Design certifications and more than 60 awards, we innovate into the future.
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