McGraw-Hill Education Expands Investment in Personalized Digital Learning

Press Release: “McGraw-Hill Education Expands Investment in Personalized Digital Learning”
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 11, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ — McGraw-Hill Education has affirmed its leadership in the area of personalized digital learning, a growing movement in education. Spurred by innovations in educational technology, personalized learning has the potential to elevate student performance to the level demanded by the global knowledge economy. McGraw-Hill is leading this evolution through the development of cutting-edge programs and technologies as well as its contributions to prominent ed tech discussions, like the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. At CES, the company will participate in the HigherEdTECH Summit, designed to bring together industry leaders to discuss how technology can positively impact higher education.
Research has shown that the closer teaching comes to a one-on-one teacher-to-student interaction, the more effective it is. However, traditional classrooms present challenges to this type of personalized instruction: instructors, with all of their responsibilities, simply do not have enough time to deliver individual instruction to every student, and they must also account for diverse groups of students with a range of comprehension levels and learning styles. Personalized learning technology promises to fundamentally change this dynamic, and programs at both the K-12 and higher education levels – such as McGraw-Hill Education’s LearnSmart and Power of U – feature sophisticated online platforms offering tools that allow students and instructors to individualize the learning experience.
Created by McGraw-Hill Education with partners CTB/McGraw-Hill and Promethean, Power of U is an all-digital middle school math program that has been shown to improve student achievement by enabling teachers to personalize instruction for each student. The company expects the program, which began in Perry Township, Ind., to expand to other markets, disciplines and grade levels.
“The advent of personalized learning technology is critical to our ability to address the central challenges of education today,” said Bob Bahash, president of McGraw-Hill Education. “McGraw-Hill Education has taken a leadership position in developing and refining this technology with the goals of increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of instruction, teaching the skills that prepare students to flourish in a rapidly changing, technologically advanced workplace, and closing the gap between those with access to high quality education and those without.”
Speaking on the topic of personalized learning at the HigherEdTECH Summit is Vineet Madan, senior vice president of Strategic Services for McGraw-Hill Education. Madan will participate in two panel discussions during the day-long symposium. The first is “Bagels and Bandwidth,” which will begin with remarks from James Applegate, Ph.D, vice president of program development at the Lumina Foundation. The remarks will be followed by a “reactor panel” moderated by Josh Fischman, senior editor of science and technology at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Joining Madan on the panel is Mehdi Maghsoodnia, chief executive officer of Bookrenter.com.
Madan will also appear in a panel discussion, “From Dewey to Digital,” which will examine the future of digital content in higher education. The session will be moderated by Casey Green, Ph.D, founding director of The Campus Computing Project. In addition to Madan, the panel will include other key innovators in the creation and delivery of digital education content.
The digitization of education is experiencing an unprecedented period of growth. A 2011 Forrester report, “Schools Move Beyond the Basics: Competition Will Drive Technology Into the Education Market,” suggests that personalized digital learning is an important movement in education because engagement is an essential factor in reaching today’s digital natives and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. The report states that interactive and engaging teaching sparks creative learning and that frequent real-time assessment enables effective personalized learning.
Additionally, a McGraw-Hill Education study announced last week, reported that students and professors experienced several benefits of using LearnSmart, an interactive study tool that adaptively assesses students’ skill levels to track the subject areas they have mastered and which areas require further instruction and practice. According to the study:

• Students using LearnSmart see significant improvements in pass rates (+12.5 percentage points), retention rates (+10.5 percentage points) and increased their overall performance in the course.
• Students who completed all the LearnSmart modules scored an average of 10 percent higher on all exams as compared with those students who did not use LearnSmart.

The Consumer Electronics Show is the world’s largest exhibition of technology. Throughout CES, McGraw-Hill Education will be tweeting about matters relating to education, technology and personalized learning at its Twitter account, @MHEducation, which can be found at http://twitter.com/mheducation.