ETIH Innovation Awards: Best Student Engagement and Assessment Tool shortlist explores impact
Platforms linking engagement with actionable feedback are shaping how learning progress is measured and supported across education.
As part of the ETIH Innovation Awards 2026 category spotlight series, we are taking a closer look at the shortlisted entries across this year’s program. In its first year, the awards received over 140 entries, reflecting both the scale and pace of change across EdTech.
This category focuses on tools that increase student participation while delivering assessment and feedback that supports learning outcomes, with winners set to be announced on May 11.
Where engagement data is expected to drive outcomes
The Best Student Engagement and Assessment Tool category covers platforms designed to connect participation with meaningful insight. This includes tools supporting formative assessment, real-time feedback, and ongoing tracking of student progress across schools, higher education, and workplace learning.
Judges are looking for evidence that engagement translates into something measurable. It is not enough to show activity levels or usage metrics. Platforms must demonstrate how feedback is used to inform teaching, identify gaps, and support intervention.
There is also a growing expectation around integration. Tools need to fit into existing workflows and be usable by educators without adding complexity. Solutions that rely on data but fail to make it actionable are unlikely to stand out, particularly where impact on outcomes is unclear.
Finalists
Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU Tech Policy Hackathon 2025)
The APRU Tech Policy Hackathon 2025 is a cross-border initiative empowering students to design AI- and data-driven regulatory innovations for underserved Southeast Asian communities. Focused on financial inclusion, digital trust, and AI-driven economic adaptation, solutions emphasised self-sustaining, implementation-ready outcomes. Attracting 299 applicants from 40 universities across 15 economies, the program removed financial and geographic barriers, providing mentor-led learning from data.org, Google, NUS, NECTEC, and Microsoft. Participants produced prototypes addressing financial inclusion, workforce development, and community empowerment. Rooted in blended and experiential learning, the result is a replicable education model proving inclusive innovation training drives measurable, lasting social impact.
Tom Reynolds, a post-BA-diagnosed dyslexic and ‘Great British Entrepreneur of the Year’ finalist, is a passionate advocate for equitable and inclusive education. With over 20 years’ teaching and school leadership experience, Tom founded EdenFiftyOne - an award-winning technology platform deconstructing literacy into 51 universal skills. As a UK Education Advisor and university teacher-training lecturer, Tom bridges the gap between classroom practice and digital innovation. Central to the EdenFiftyOne platform and to Tom’s mission is ‘EFO’: a pedagogical AI assistant designed to democratize literacy skills education, providing teachers, leaders, learners, and parents with a technology-driven solution to level the literacy playing field.
Explorance BlueX is a flexible, intuitive survey platform designed to help higher education institutions quickly gather actionable feedback. Built for both research and operational purposes, it streamlines survey creation, deployment, and analysis, enabling institutions to make data-driven decisions efficiently while maintaining high-quality, consistent results. The platform accommodates a wide range of content, from simple forms to complex, logic-driven surveys, with a drag-and-drop interface, rich question types, customizable layouts, advanced logic, and unlimited branding options. BlueX delivers high-quality insights without requiring technical expertise, supporting institutions to empower anyone on campus to capture meaningful feedback at scale.
Synap is an online learning and assessment platform, originally developed to help medical students prepare for exams through small, frequent, personalized practice. That concept has since expanded significantly, including through a collaboration with the University of Law that has transformed how law students prepare for the Solicitors Qualifying Examination. Synap embeds itself into students' daily learning through practice questions, spaced learning, and personalized feedback, sitting alongside formal diagnostics and mock exams. Behind the scenes, a powerful predictive model gives tutors early warnings of which students need support, enabling timely intervention throughout the course.
Explore the full shortlist
You can explore the full ETIH Innovation Awards 2026 shortlist to see the companies and platforms shaping this year’s awards. Winners will be announced on May 11.
