Vevox joins forces with Wooclap: what does it mean for active learning?

There’s another interesting development in the world of Vevox. Wooclap, an active learning platform used in education and training, has acquired Vevox, bringing together two platforms with a shared focus on making live sessions more interactive and participatory.
If you use Vevox at LJMU, the important thing to know is that nothing is changing for now. Vevox will continue to operate as its own platform, and you can carry on using it exactly as you do today. What makes the announcement interesting is what it might mean further down the line.

Two approaches, one direction

Vevox and Wooclap have historically active learning from slightly different but complementary angles.

Vevox is builty on ‘Valuing Every Voice’, by prioritising intuitive, often anonymous polling and Q&A, the platform focuses heavily on democratizing participation. For example, in a first-year lecture, Vevox allows students to submit and upvote questions anonymously. This ensures the quietest students have the exact same input as the most vocal, removing the fear of judgment that often stifles engagement.

Wooclap, meanwhile, roots its design in the learning sciences, leveraging technology to drive deeper cognitive engagement and critical thinking. Rather than just gathering opinions or questions, Wooclap pushes students to apply what they know. An educator might use its "Find on Image" feature to have students pinpoint a specific structure on an anatomy diagram, or deploy sorting and matching tasks to test active recall of a complex framework in real time.

While their starting points differ—one focusing on giving everyone a voice, the other on testing comprehension—their end goals have always overlapped.

Now operating together, the combined platforms support a community of more than 1,000 institutions globally. As these kinds of engagement tools become increasingly embedded into virtual learning environments like Canvas and everyday workflows in Microsoft Teams.

So, what happens to Vevox?

Vevox and Wooclap will continue to operate as two separate platforms, with existing products and services remaining in place. There’s nothing new to learn, migrate or set up.

Longer term, however, the ambition is to bring the best of both platforms into what Vevox describes as a more ‘unified experience’.

What that actually looks like remains to be seen. There are no details yet about which features might come together, or what this will eventually mean for the Vevox platform we use today.

The bigger picture

This announcement is particularly interesting when you look at the direction Vevox has already been travelling in.

Earlier this year, we wrote about Vevox’s shift from being primarily a live polling tool towards becoming a more complete environment for running an interactive session. Embedded PowerPoint presentations, Quick Polls, matching activities, timers and AI-generated quizzes have all gradually expanded what you can do without leaving Vevox.

The Wooclap acquisition feels like another step in that journey.

Both platforms are ultimately trying to solve a similar problem: how do you make a live teaching session somewhere students actively participate, rather than simply sit and receive information?

That question becomes even more interesting as AI changes how easily students can access information away from the classroom. If information itself is increasingly easy to find, the value of bringing people together lies much more in what they do with it: discussing, questioning, testing ideas, checking understanding and learning from one another.

It is still too early to know exactly where the acquisition will take Vevox, and for now the two platforms remain separate. But bringing together Vevox’s emphasis on inclusive participation with Wooclap’s focus on active learning makes this one worth watching.

What do I need to do?

Nothing. You can continue using Vevox at LJMU as normal.
If you haven’t explored Vevox recently, take a look at our Vevox staff guide to find out how you can use polling, Q&A, quizzes and other interactive activities in your teaching.

We’ll keep an eye on what comes next and share any developments that affect how we use Vevox at LJMU.