No lab room booking, no VM images to maintain. Just browser-based offensive, defensive and sysadmin labs that turn your syllabus into something students actually open on a Sunday night.
We're not another LMS module gathering dust. Here's what changes the week you turn this on.
Every lab runs on a dedicated cloud instance in the browser. Nothing for your IT team to image, and nothing for a student to break the night before it's due.
Gems and live rankings turn "optional practice" into something students refresh between lectures. Ask anyone who's tried to beat their lab partner's streak.
Every completed lab lands on their profile. Offensive, defensive and sysadmin work, all in one place, ready to point an employer to while the degree is still in progress.
Slot us into the syllabus easily, smoothly and with no fuss.
No prerequisites. Every student lands on the same baseline before the real work starts.
Offensive, defensive and sysadmin, back to back. We don't think the strongest operators specialise early. They've broken things, defended things, and kept the lights on first.
Focus on scenarios for whichever labs stretched them the most.
A profile full of completed labs across all three disciplines, ready to hand a recruiter and not just a professor.
Rankings matter
Every completed lab earns gems. Every cohort gets its own live ranking. We didn't design it to feel like homework, and students seem to agree.
| Rank | Name & Rank | Badges |  Gems |
Bloods |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
0xRaven Ember |
Speedrunner First Blood | 2,140 | 3 | |
|
packet_pixie Ember |
Threat Hunter | 1,985 | 1 | |
|
null_ferret Ember |
Hardened | 1,760 | 0 | |
| 4 |
cipher_jay Spark |
1,690 | 0 |
Illustrative preview. Every cohort gets its own board.
Take pride in where you study, compete against other colleges & universities. Year round.
| Rank | Institution | Active students | Gems |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Ashcombe University |
214 | 48,210 | |
Northfield College |
176 | 44,780 | |
Vantage Institute of Technology |
158 | 41,005 | |
| 4 | Your institution |
0 | Not yet enrolled |
Illustrative preview of a feature currently in development, not a live standings table.
How we'd grade the way most departments are currently doing this, and of course, us.
| Category | GemForge for Education | Lecture-only curriculum | Generic Online Course subscription |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hands-on labs | A+ | D | B+ |
| Setup burden on your IT team | A+ | N/A | B− |
| Offensive / defensive / sysadmin coverage | A | C | C− |
| Whether students actually log in unprompted | A+ | F | C |
| Something worth putting on a CV | A | F | B |
| Cohort / instructor visibility | A | A (manual) | F |
No lengthy procurement, no complex onboarding. If it looks like a good fit, we move at the speed of a syllabus, not a software vendor.
Send us your syllabus
Department, cohort size, and what's already covered. We'll tell you honestly where we fit and where we don't.
We map the term plan
Which lab lands where, and which might be better placed later in the syllabus.
Students are in by next class
Browser-based means there's no term-long wait on hardware procurement.
Next term, more tracks
New labs drop regularly, so returning students always have a reason to keep climbing the board.
No long application form. Just send us an email and we'll take it from there.
Message us directly
DiscordConnect on LinkedIn
GemForge LabsWe aim to respond to all program enquiries within 2 business days.
Office hours
No appointment necessary
Tell us about your program and we'll put together an example term plan that could fit your syllabus.
Get in touch
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