Digital learning company McGraw-Hill Education, US, has designated its Tel Aviv-area technology innovation center as its company-wide interoperability hub. The center will continue to ensure that all of the company's current and future digital learning solutions adhere to the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) guidelines, the industry standard for edtech interoperability. A contributing member of the IMS and an advocate for open standards, McGraw-Hill Education aims to make its content open and searchable to anyone and to help make education technology more seamless and flexible for instructors and students everywhere.
Although digital education technology has become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of edtech tools and solutions that run only within specific operating systems and are therefore incompatible with one another. This lack of integration means that the promise of the real-time classroom – where data can instantly be processed and analysed across students' academic records – cannot be realised. By prescribing a set of universal protocols on which all new education technology will operate, the LTI guidelines promise to alleviate virtually every edtech compatibility concern that exists today.
According to IMS Global, school technology leaders have already reported that LTI alignment routinely saves them more than 90 percent of the time that would otherwise be spent on custom software integrations.
McGraw-Hill Education's Tel Aviv technology center has been instrumental in the company's interoperability work to date and will expand in the coming months, adding technology professionals from both within and outside of the education sector.
McGraw-Hill Education has already successfully aligned many of its premier digital learning solutions to the LTI guidelines. Of note is McGraw-Hill Connect, the online learning platform of choice for hundreds of colleges and universities around the country, which is now equipped to support any LTI-certified digital learning solution on the market. Additionally, McGraw-Hill Campus allows schools to integrate the company's digital products, including Connect and McGraw-Hill LearnSmart, with any learning management system.
