McGraw-Hill Education, a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., US, has launched a new version of the company's market-leading adaptive learning program, McGraw-Hill LearnSmart.
With this expansion, McGraw-Hill Education aims to help improve education and results for a market of more than 15 million students who are currently enrolled in the 31 course areas for which the new version of LearnSmart is available. More than 2 million students have used LearnSmart in tandem with their McGraw-Hill Education course materials since LearnSmart's launch in 2009, making it the most widely used and intelligent adaptive study tool in higher education. Nearly 500,000 students have used LearnSmart in the first quarter of 2013 alone.
LearnSmart, which McGraw-Hill Education developed in conjunction with adaptive technology partner Area9, personalises learning by continually assessing students' knowledge, skill and confidence levels and then designing targeted study paths that help students improve in the areas they need to the most. By allowing students to focus their outside-of-class study time on the topics and concepts that are most challenging to them, LearnSmart has been shown to help students study more efficiently, develop greater proficiency and earn better grades.
Because this new version of LearnSmart is organised by course learning objective rather than the objectives of specific textbook content, students and instructors can use it with any title or even with open source material in the course areas where it is offered.
The decision to expand access to LearnSmart comes on the heels of several other company announcements and milestones related to adaptive learning. Earlier this year, McGraw-Hill Education launched LearnSmart Advantage, a new suite of adaptive learning products for the college market that includes SmartBook, the world's first-ever adaptive e-book, and it recently introduced LearnSmart to the high school market. Last summer, McGraw-Hill Education announced plans to make LearnSmart – which was traditionally sold only to instructors and institutions – available for students and parents to purchase directly.
