Our Journey: A Word from the Co-Founder

Let’s talk about:

Hi, I am Zara Ziad, the co-founder of Classverse. Let me take you through a quick background on how I ended up building Classverse.

How it all started?

Around December 2018, I was on a call with a Canadian friend who facilitates DACUM workshops (a workshop where expert job workers get together and define their job in terms of duties and tasks; the output is widely used for multiple purposes, such as training new employees, giving vocational training to students, etc.).

He explained to me how DACUM has always been conducted physically in a room – which is undoubtedly its biggest limitation. The expert workers must be in town to attend the workshop, the facilitator must book a room or prepare physical resources, and the output, in most cases, is lost between physical files and PDFs.

First prototype: Aidematic

Just to help out a friend to digitize his workshop experience, one of my friends and I started to work on a web application. We coordinated with our facilitator friend in Canada and digitized a lot of processes that usually take place during a workshop. The first prototype we built gained a lot of attention. We launched it under the name Aidematic, and a lot of renowned institutes took it for a test drive – including Eastern Kentucky University (EKU), and Southeast Community College (SCC), and some even bought our subscription! (Swiss Contact and GFA Consulting Group)

The big realization

We received a lot of feedback from different facilitators around the world. And with time, we realized one important aspect: More than digitizing the collaboration activities that happen in workshops or classrooms, facilitators and trainers want to make the entire experience virtual.

Just around that time, the pandemic happened. And we saw it all over the world: a simple meeting solution was not enough anymore. Standalone video conferencing was not enough.

How a simple meeting solution is not enough?

When we search for online meeting solutions, we mostly find vendors selling video conferencing tools. Most of us struggle to notice that it’s not enough to be able to see and talk to our peers online (workshop participants, classroom students, etc.). We need an online tool that virtualizes the entire experience – in addition to video calls, we need to virtualize the physical resources needed and the various collaboration activities conducted during a classroom or workshop.

One solution to all problems: Bringing everything together

The solution was obvious to us. We needed to build a virtual collaboration platform that facilitates the facilitator or teacher (the irony). A tool that brings everything together in one place. There are some crucial features required to conduct virtual classrooms or workshops. These include:

Video conferencing for connecting and communicating with participants.
Whiteboard for collaborative brainstorming and problem solving.
Media files for uploading and playing helpful resources or course material.
Conversation threads for posting messages and communicating information.
Quiz, survey, polls, and assessment features for collecting consensus, opinions, and feedback from participants, or running examinations and assignments.
Other facilitation tools like session scheduling, agenda planning, timer designing, personal notetaking, and more!

Finding Classverse: How does it differ?

People usually ask me one question about this solution:

Since Microsoft Teams and Zoom allow app integrations, why don’t facilitators install the apps they need and use them for collaboration?

The answer is simple. Nowadays, it isn’t just about having the right tools that can facilitate you to conduct activities. Now, it is about carrying out efficient and meaningful activities. This is mostly achieved by sharing data between apps. For example, you can install Survey Monkey in Teams, and use Teams whiteboard. But you cannot convert sticky notes on whiteboard to a poll in Survey Monkey.

These disparate apps do get the work done, but the data produced is not interoperable. As a result, facilitators lack the most important component while using other tools, that is personalization.

Instead of giving power to one collaborative tool (whiteboard in Miro and MURAL; video conferencing in Teams and Zoom; survey in Survey Monkey or Mentimeter), I decided to design a virtual collaboration platform with no restrictions. You can enter the session room but you don’t have to connect to the video call if you don’t want to call someone. Similarly, you don’t have to use any tool until you need to use it.

Classverse offers you an empty canvas in a session and a pocket full of facilitation tools. Design, work, and collaborate as you want!

Finding our best use case: Virtual classroom platform

While working on this solution, we came across some interesting requirements from educational institutions for virtual classrooms. Although Classverse is inherently designed to tackle any virtual gathering use case – since it’s configurable and customizable to its core – we decided to explore the virtual education industry first. We are building a solution that schools can use to map their campus online and empower teachers to conduct online classes with minimal managerial overhead.

How can you try Classverse?

So, this is what we have built. Our virtual classroom app is now live and we’re inviting individuals and organizations to take it for a test drive with our freemium service. Signing up is easy, just fill out the form below, and one of our representatives will be in touch with you shortly to set up your account. And if you are a fellow school administrator or teacher who wants to join hands with us on this journey and help us build a solution for you, feel free to contact me.

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