A 2022 Year in Review

2022 was an exciting year for Class.

While advancing our mission to change the way the world learns, we achieved new milestones, including many new and exciting partnerships with schools, institutions, and organizations globally.

Following our acquisition of Blackboard Collaborate this past year, we now serve ​​10M+ users from 1,750+ institutions worldwide.

As the world evolves, we continue to witness more schools and institutions utilizing and making synchronous online learning a more important part of the educational experience – whether to enhance their online programs, complement their in-person learning, or support a combination of modalities. We are excited for the year to come and to share with you a number of learnings and updates from 2022.

New features and enhancements

Class continues to evolve to meet the growing needs of learners and instructors. Here’s a snapshot of our most exciting 2022 product updates:

Proctor view – Our proctor view provides learners with the personalized support and feedback they need for assignments, group work, or secure online test-taking. Check out this video from Austin Community College, who use Class to proctor exams online, saving their institution over $500,000 in annual costs.

Instructional whiteboard – Write, share media, doodle notes, mark maps, and work through math problems using our native instructional whiteboard for the Class platform and spark discussion and interactivity with your learners and instructors.

Hybrid support – The future of learning is hybrid–and Class is working hard towards supporting in-person and remote learners simultaneously (sometimes even in the same room or lecture hall). Our upcoming hybrid monitor support features help facilitate hybrid instruction all in one place.

Class for Web – We launched the Class for Web application, making online synchronous learning even more accessible and available for any user or device. Class for Web allows learners to access virtual classrooms by using their web browser of choice.

Enhanced breakout rooms – This year, we added breakout room timers, all-room broadcast messaging, and room-to-room student mobility. Now, instructors can launch differentiated content like polls, quizzes, and media into unique rooms to differentiate the breakout room learning experience.

Closed captioning – We also added closed captioning to improve student accessibility. Instructors can automatically transcribe closed captions or assign a participant transcriber to type them manually.

Course templates – Our new course templates help instructors and instructional designers reproduce lessons at scale across multiple classes or courses. Instructors can create and reuse templates saved in the Class application.

Security & SOC2 compliance – Class achieved SOC2 compliance, a voluntary standard for service organizations, developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), which specifies how organizations should manage customer data. We remain committed to keeping your organization and its learners secure.

Class API & LTI 1.3 – We built the foundation for the next generation of LTI (learning tool interoperability), nicknamed LTI Advantage. This next generation of LTI interoperability improves upon the standardized framework to enable Class to work seamlessly with your learning management system (LMS), no matter which one you choose.

Customer spotlights

We are humbled by our customers’ creativity and passion for learning innovation. Here are just a few use cases that inspired us this past year.

George Mason University – GMU integrated Class with Blackboard Learn for a richer and more seamless online learning experience for their learners and instructors. Class provides GMU faculty more ability to bring their skills, knowledge, and experience from in-person classrooms to an online environment.

As Kim Redelsheimer, Adjunct Faculty, says, “Class isn’t just a video conferencing tool; it’s a classroom tool.”

Laurel Springs School – Laurel Springs School, a private online K-12 virtual academy, wanted to increase human connection and belonging for students and teachers to affirm notions of community in their learning spaces. Using Class, students reported more peer-to-peer and student-to-teacher connections, a key driver of academic success.

“Students formed meaningful relationships with each other and their teacher because of the engaging ways they came together in the Class space,” said Renée Mindek, Dean of Student Engagement. “It’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience for our students.”

Delaware State – The team at Delaware State University recognized a need to improve student engagement in the virtual classroom. Delaware State uses Class to help keep students engaged and on track–such as more personalized feedback, easily sharing course materials, and data and tools to track focus and participation.

“What attracted me to Class was that everyone could be engaged,” says Dr. Clytrice Watson, Associate Provost for Academic and Student Services. “It has the attention tracker, enhanced breakout rooms, the ability to show different websites or links without going in and out, and it just makes it easier to keep students engaged.”

TTEC – TTEC is a worldwide digital leader in customer experience, with 62,000+ employees providing customer experience technology solutions, support, and development to leading organizations globally. TTEC chose Class as their live learning tool to upskill their employees, from virtual onboarding to robust CX training and development programs.

A growing number of organizations–like TTEC–are using Class to innovate how they deliver learning to their workforce. Discover how companies enhance their talent in customer success, sales enablement, and leadership development with Class.

Partnerships

This past year, we partnered with a number of organizations that bring innovation, industry knowledge, and a shared passion for changing the way the world learns. We welcomed to the Class family Intel, Carahsoft, and CoSo Cloud, just to name a few. Anthology, Desire2Learn, and Open LMS, all named Class the preferred virtual meeting technology partner for Blackboard Learn, Brightspace, and Open LMS, respectively.

Class is also well underway to gain FedRAMP certification in the year ahead to help government agencies engage, train, and scale their hybrid workforces globally.

Global expansion

2022 was a big year for Class across the globe. We added 100 new Class customers from 25+ countries, including leading universities in the U.K., Ireland, Spain, Italy, Korea, Australia, and more. Our reseller network also grew – we added 45+ international reseller partners to our global network.

We hosted partner conferences in Bangkok, Mexico City, and Rome and attended 50+ EdTech events, solidifying our go-to-market relationships with partner organizations. Class.com got a refresh and is now available in 11 languages.

Class Cares

Changing the way the world learns is more than just creating a technology to bring equitable learning to all. It’s also about giving back to the community that’s building the future of online learning with us. Class Cares is our initiative that takes our team’s commitment to helping and puts it into action through volunteering, donations, and partnerships to help learners in need around the world.

This year, we hosted our annual backpack drive, fulfilled educators’ Amazon Wishlists for Teacher Appreciation Week, donated to classroom libraries for back-to-school, and provided computers for underserved students in Italy.

What’s next for Class

We’re proud to continue to provide an engaging, reliable platform that makes virtual and hybrid classrooms feel like real ones. Looking ahead, we are eager to welcome more partners and institutions to the Class family and further challenge ourselves by spearheading the future of education technology with Class.

We’re looking forward to an impactful 2023 and to continuing our mission to change the way the world learns.