InSpace Proximity

InSpace Proximity (InSpace) was launched in 2020 by Dr. Narine Hall, a data science assistant professor and academic program director at Champlain College, and Haykanush Lputyan, a software and video engineer. The platform serves as a collaborative video conferencing tool that replicates personal interaction between students and teachers in virtual classrooms. InSpace was born out of the frustration surrounding the limited availability of student-teacher interactions in virtual meeting platforms. Employing a bottom-up approach, InSpace crowdsources and implements features based on educator suggestions, tools, and solutions. As of June 2021, the platform was used by more than 100 universities and K-12 schools globally.

In June 2021, the company raised USD 6 million in two rounds of seed funding. The funds will be used to increase educator support, establish a resource network for users to share ideas, and for other improvements such as streamlined registration and payment.

In August 2021, InSpace announced its full integration with Canvas, a learning management system (LMS) built by Instructure. This partnership will allow for features developed by InSpace, such as video-conferencing, chat functions, mobile notifications, and virtual office hours, to be available for all Canvas platform users. Additionally, all educators with Canvas accounts will receive a free semester of office hours when signing up for the InSpace demo.