As we wrap up 2024, we’re taking a moment to reflect on a year full of growth and connection. From welcoming new team members to building partnerships and supporting educators and learners worldwide, it’s been a meaningful journey.
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished together and excited for what’s ahead in 2025. Let’s take a look back at some of the highlights from this past year!
New Faces
Speaking of putting people first, Cirrus welcomes two new colleagues to our growing team! Annie Chang and Aiden Molavi have joined our Customer Success team, and we couldn’t be happier.
With over seven years of experience in the SaaS industry, Annie brings a blend of customer success expertise and product development knowledge. Her knack for simplifying complex technical projects and her passion for making technology accessible make her a perfect fit for our people-first approach at Cirrus.
Outside of work, Annie enjoys discovering new indie music and exploring the best foodie spots in town. Her mix of expertise, enthusiasm, and curiosity makes her a fantastic addition to our team.
With a solid academic background and hands-on experience in EdTech, Aiden knows how to bring education and technology together in meaningful ways. At Cirrus, he’s already helping educators and learners get the most out of our platform, offering hands-on support and guidance every step of the way.
Beyond the office, Aiden enjoys running and playing flamenco guitar—both reflecting his energy and creativity. We’re excited to have him on board and look forward to the positive impact he’ll make for our team and our clients.
Welcome to Cirrus, Aiden and Annie!
New partnerships
New partnerships open doors to fresh ideas and shared successes. They’re built on trust, collaboration, and the excitement of working toward something bigger together. This year, we’ve seen how they spark incredible progress—and we’re just getting started!
ReadSpeaker
Our partnership with ReadSpeaker brings industry-leading text-to-speech technology directly into the Cirrus platform, advancing accessibility in e-assessments. Together, we’re enabling test-takers to interact with exams in ways that suit their individual needs, fostering inclusivity and fairness.
Benefits for our customers:
- Exams designed to welcome all learners, including those with disabilities or language challenges.
- Stronger alignment with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, ensuring fairness and inclusivity.
- A smooth, intuitive experience for test-takers who benefit from audio-based content
Netcampus
Joining forces with Netcampus, a key player in South Africa’s education and corporate training sectors, we’ve focused on making secure, high-stakes assessments easy and stress-free. This partnership blends our advanced technology with their local expertise to drive change in online exams across South Africa.
Benefits for our customers:
- Dependable and adaptable solutions tailored to the unique needs of both educational institutions and corporate clients.
- Stronger exam security with AI proctoring, ensuring peace of mind for every high-stakes moment.
- A collaborative partnership that lightens your load and amplifies the support you can count on.
Spotlighting our new customers <3
This year, we proudly partnered with four exceptional organisations, Keelson Marine Assurance, PAT Business School, McMaster University, and ETC Awards to elevate their industries and bring remarkable benefits to their communities of learners and professionals.
Keelson Marine Assurance
Keelson Marine Assurance is a trusted leader in maritime consultancy, renowned for setting the gold standard in safety and excellence for dynamic positioning (DP). Their pioneering DP Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program—the first ever to earn Nautical Institute accreditation—demonstrates their unwavering dedication to empowering maritime professionals with the skills and knowledge they need to excel in one of the world’s most demanding industries.
With Cirrus, Keelson is redefining how DP exams are delivered, making them accessible anytime, anywhere—whether at sea or ashore. Together, we’re helping DP operators stay confident and prepared, ensuring maritime operations run smoothly and safely across the globe.
PAT Business School
PAT Business School is a true pioneer in education for finance and compliance professionals, celebrated for its forward-thinking programs in FinTech, RegTech, and accountancy. As one of Ireland’s most respected EdTech providers, PAT combines academic excellence with real-world expertise, equipping professionals with the tools they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
PAT is redefining the high-stakes exam experience, creating a supportive journey for learners and organisations alike. With secure, innovative testing solutions and features like AI-assisted marking, PAT is shaping the future of professional education with confidence and care.
McMaster University
We are thrilled to welcome McMaster University, one of Canada’s top-ranked institutions, to the Cirrus community! Known for its innovative approaches to teaching and learning, McMaster is a global leader in higher education. With a commitment to fostering critical thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration, the university prepares students to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.
Together, we’re ensuring their students experience secure, stress-free exams that reflect the university’s high academic standards.
ETC Awards
We’re proud to partner with ETC Awards, a UK-based awarding organisation dedicated to celebrating achievement and supporting lifelong learning. ETC Awards specialises in delivering qualifications that empower learners, organisations, and communities to thrive.
Using Cirrus, ETC Awards is modernising their approach to assessments, combining robust exam security with an intuitive platform that makes the process easy for everyone involved. Together, we’re helping ETC Awards uphold their commitment to fairness and excellence in credentialing.
Platform pick-me-ups
At Cirrus, your feedback shapes everything we do. This year, we’ve worked to simplify your experience, support inclusivity, and help you confidently deliver assessments. Our goal is to provide tools that make your work easier and more effective while ensuring candidates feel supported every step of the way. Here’s a look at what’s new:
- Library Overhaul – January 2024: Building great assessments starts in our Library. We streamlined how you manage Collections, Items, and Media with better filtering, sorting, and a consistent layout. Navigating your content is now straightforward and efficient.
- Reasonable Adjustments – February 2024: You can now assign individual extra time percentages for candidates, automatically applied to exams and timed sections. This ensures every test-taker gets the exact accommodations they need.
- Test Wizard – March 2024: Our Test Wizard combines exam creation and scheduling into one simple process. It saves time and keeps everything in one place.
The big release…June 2024 – The revamped Cirrus Marking Tool!
The new Cirrus Marking Tool is built to make grading faster and more straightforward. We’ve focused on features that save you time and support better grading practices:
- Clearer Interface: The layout is designed to help you find what you need without extra steps.
- Flexible Grading Options: Use points, rubrics, or narrative feedback to match your teaching style.
- Collaborative Grading: Share and comment on assessments with colleagues to keep grading consistent.
- Real-Time Data: Get insights on performance while you grade, helping you make informed decisions.
- AI-Powered Essay Grading: This feature supports essay evaluation by learning from your grading patterns and helping manage heavy workloads.
August 2024 – The improved Cirrus Item Creation Panel
We’ve also supercharged the Item Creation Panel to make building assessments faster, smarter, and more collaborative. Here’s how:
- Instant Insights: Keep exams fair and balanced with stats like item difficulty, usage, and average time spent.
- Effortless Organisation: Smarter tagging and blueprints ensure your exams are precise, aligned, and cheat-proof.
- Collaborate Like a Pro: Real-time comments and change tracking make teamwork seamless and effective.
- Accountability: The new revision history logs every update for complete transparency.
Cirrus’s first event
On October 17th, we had the pleasure of hosting an incredible e-assessment conference in the city of Dublin, generously supported by Chartered Accountants Ireland. The event brought together experts and thought leaders from higher education, awarding bodies, and qualification boards for a day filled with thought-provoking discussions and shared expertise.
Our esteemed speakers covered a range of fascinating topics:
Ian Browne, Director of Education at Chartered Accountants Ireland, shared his organisation’s shift to digital testing, driven by the need for better efficiency, security, and increasing demands for reasonable accommodations. Drawing from his background in academia and finance, Ian led this transformation ahead of the pandemic, tackling challenges like rising venue costs and evolving exam needs.
Dr. P.J. Wall highlighted the power of AI in education and the accounting profession, emphasizing that while AI can streamline tasks and enhance efficiency, the real opportunity lies in embracing its potential now to reconfigure workflows, address ethical challenges, and refocus on the irreplaceable human dimension
Christine Kavanagh Nangle shared how the transition to the Cirrus Platform redefined education by blending academic rigour with real-world relevance. She highlighted the importance of creating inclusive, supportive environments that embrace innovation like AI while keeping the human experience at the heart of every assessment.
Gerry Fahy and Orlágh Morris showcased how the Cirrus partnership transformed Irish assessments with inclusive, workplace-relevant computer-based exams. They emphasised innovations like adaptive learning, AI correction, and practical tools to prepare students for the future while reducing stress and ensuring fairness.
Sojin Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of Blees AI, shared insights into the world of AI-powered essay marking. Highlighting both the benefits and challenges, she explained how automated scoring can increase consistency, reduce marking time by up to 30 times compared to human assessors, and save costs. She also addressed concerns about transparency, bias, and job security, emphasising that AI is a tool meant to support, not replace, human educators.
At the ‘Future-Proofing Education’ event in Dublin, Jeremy Carter, CEO of Sentira XR and co-founder of Cirrus Assessment, captivated the audience with his insights into e-assessment and educational advancements. He explored the capabilities of current and future e-assessment platforms and showcased innovative VR applications in healthcare training, offering a compelling vision of education’s future.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to Gráinne McElwain, whose energy and professionalism as our emcee set the perfect tone for the day, and to Ian Smith, who ensured everything ran smoothly behind the scenes with filming and sound. Your contributions made this event truly exceptional.
It was a privilege to connect with so many passionate individuals, and we’re excited to continue the conversations sparked during the conference. Thank you to everyone who joined us and made this day so memorable!
2024 Conference Highlights
As 2024 draws to a close, we’re taking a moment to reflect on an incredible year of conferences that brought us closer to our global community of educators, innovators, and assessment experts. Each event offered a unique opportunity to learn, share, and grow. Here’s a look back at the highlights:
Innovations in Testing, Anaheim, California (March 3-6, 2024)
We kicked off the year in sunny Anaheim, celebrating 25 years of the Innovations in Testing Conference. From exploring the future of testing with generative AI to showcasing our secure exam solutions alongside Proctorio, this event was a perfect blend of professional insights and California vibes.
Key Takeaways
- Cutting-edge trends like generative AI and test security.
- Collaborative solutions for seamless exam delivery.
- Valuable networking with global assessment leaders.
LearnTec, Karlsruhe, Germany (June 4-6, 2024)
Europe’s leading digital education event brought together innovators from across the continent. We were thrilled to showcase how our technology supports IT-driven learning and assessment systems, making education more accessible and impactful.
Key Takeaways
- Fresh strategies for integrating tech into education.
- Inspiring sessions on gamified and hyper-personalised learning.
- Insights into authentic assessment practices.
E-ATP, Berlin, Germany (October 23-25, 2024)
In the heart of Berlin, we joined assessment experts to explore the human side of assessment technology. This year’s theme, focused on empathy and inclusivity, resonated deeply with our mission to empower test-takers worldwide.
Key Takeaways
- Innovations in VR and AI for practical assessments.
- Solutions for ensuring fairness and inclusivity in credentialing.
- Insights into the challenges and opportunities in Germany’s education sector.
FAB Conference and Awards, Leicester, UK (November 25-26, 2024)
We closed the year at the FAB 2024 Conference, engaging with leaders in awarding and assessment to discuss the sector’s evolving role in education and skills development. From AI to regulation, this event was a hub of forward-thinking ideas.
Key Takeaways
- Strategic approaches to leveraging AI in assessment.
- Insights into regulatory changes and compliance best practices.
- A spotlight on social mobility and skill alignment.
2024 was a year of connection, discovery, and collaboration. From Anaheim’s sunshine to Berlin’s rich culture, each conference brought us closer to the people and ideas shaping the future of education and assessment.
As we wrap up 2024, we are proud of all of our milestones we’ve reached and the partnerships that made it happen. Looking ahead to 2025, the journey continues. Stay tuned for
