Janison under the spotlight

Founded in 1998, Janison seeks to transform the way people learn through providing digital assessment and online exams for K-12 schools, higher education, professional certification bodies, and governments around the world. Before delivering world-firsts in large-scale digital assessments, the company innovated cloud-based learning and professional development solutions in the earliest days of the World Wide Web.

Key Statistic
Ten million tests conducted in the past five years

David Caspari, Chief Executive Officer of Janison was interviewed as part of The Australian EdTech Market Census 2020 report.

Key success stories and tipping points
Key challenges
Impact of COVID-19
Funding
Looking to the future
Key learnings

Key success stories and tipping points

While Janison initially earned its global reputation for creating learning management systems (LMS), the company’s move into delivering robust digital assessment platforms at national scale hit a tipping point when the Australian Government engaged Janison to digitise the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The NAPLAN Online project allowed Janison to achieve a world-first in delivering testing at scale in May 2018, reaching 200,000 students across 1,400 schools. Notable recent projects include working with the OECD to deliver the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools test in more than ten countries, remote-proctored language testing for the British Council, a key strategic partnership with D2L Brightspace and, more recently amid COVID-19, enabling assessments to continue for more than 1 million students who were prevented from physically attending exams at their school or university.

Key challenges

More recently, Janison has begun to shift from offering completely bespoke, customised assessment platforms to a standardised but highly configurable solution. There were some challenges in preparing the market to take the leap of faith to embrace this change. Janison pushed the benefits of this standardised but configurable approach, which allows for higher quality, streamlined costs, and more frequent updates; a key enabler to scaling up quickly.

Impact of COVID-19

The Janison team were particularly well equipped to respond to the impacts of COVID19 for education providers. The team noted observed that, if you were to ask universities at the start of the year whether they were going to review their assessment methods, fewer than 20 percent would suggest they were interested. As a result of COVID-19, Janison believes this number to now be more than 80 percent and, as a result, the company has received significantly more interest via inbound enquiries.

Funding

Janison has been listed on the Australian Stock Exchange since 2017. It had a successful $10 million capital raising to fund global growth initiatives. Further capital raising has allowed Janison to increase spend on sales and marketing, and accelerate the roadmap for the assessment platform to provide more features that the market is demanding, linked to the impact of COVID-19.

Looking to the future

Janison has seen significant growth from the acceleration of market opportunities through COVID-19. It continues to support professional accreditation bodies, schools and higher education providers to digitise their assessments; scaling globally through partnerships; expanding its work for the OECD; and acquiring the UNSW Global Assessments business including the ICAS and REACH assessments. In the past five years, Janison has delivered nearly 10 million tests, a number it expects to replicate this year alone, through customers such as the University of London which is holding its end of semester exams through Janison. Janison believes this is only the start of the digital transformation for assessments and expects to see an increase in demand and customers in the future.

Key learnings

The team at Janison highlight the need for EdTech organisations to be courageous. The EdTech market has traditionally flown under the radar and education has always been a conservative sector. However, the past few months have seen a significant transition to new ways of working. Those who are prepared to enter the market now – rather than wait – will reap the benefits.

EduGrowth Deloitte Census 2020 Report

How has COVID-19 impacted the EdTech industry?
The Australian EdTech Market Census COVID-19 update
EduGrowth & Deloitte, 2021