McGraw Hill has announced the launch of Sharpen Advantage, an enterprise version of its Sharpen study app developed for higher education institutions.
Sharpen Advantage incorporates new AI features that enable faculty and administrators to measure, curate, and create learning experiences within the app, while extending the Sharpen experience to an institutional scale. The goal is to ensure students have access to an AI-supported study resource built on vetted content from McGraw Hill and the adopting institution.
For the first time, faculty and administrators can use Sharpen Advantage to upload or generate custom content and distribute it directly to students’ mobile devices. The platform also provides analytics to help institutions identify individual learning gaps, allow early intervention, and work toward improving outcomes.
David Cortese, Chief Digital Information Officer at McGraw Hill, highlighted that although AI has transformed how students access information, higher education faces the challenge of ensuring that the technology improves educational outcomes. He explained that Sharpen Advantage allows faculty and administrators to create tailored learning experiences while using academically curated AI, making it a safe and relevant tool to support real learning.
Sharpen is delivered through a mobile app that reflects how students engage online and offers activities such as short videos, quizzes, and flashcards to build subject knowledge. AI is used to personalize activities and predict performance based on past student interaction with the app.
A new generative AI feature, Ask Sharpen, enables students to ask questions or upload notes to receive personalized study support. The feature includes academic-specific guardrails and primarily uses Sharpen’s content library or institution- or student-uploaded materials. When responses come from public sources, they are labeled to ensure transparency.
In addition to Ask Sharpen, Sharpen Advantage includes:
• Radar: An AI-enabled dashboard that gives real-time insights into student learning. It allows faculty, department chairs, deans, and administrators to track engagement, monitor progress, identify learning gaps, and measure performance for individuals, courses, programs, or groups.
• Creator: A tool for institutions to create or upload custom learning materials such as videos, slides, quizzes, flashcards, and practice problems. These are added to an institution’s Sharpen library and delivered in mobile format. Radar insights guide decisions on content creation to address student needs.
• Playlists: A feature for instructors and administrators to curate content from the Sharpen library into playlists of learning activities. These can be instantly shared with students’ mobile devices.
Dr. Dave Duke, chief product officer for higher education at McGraw Hill, added that many institutions face challenges beyond engagement, including limited visibility into student progress and outcomes. He stated that Sharpen Advantage offers a responsible AI framework that equips faculty and administrators with tools and insights to support students, providing visibility into performance and engagement to improve retention and academic success.
McGraw Hill will host a webinar on responsible AI use in higher education and how institutions can apply Sharpen Advantage at the campus level.
Sharpen was first introduced in 2022 and has been downloaded by more than one million learners. The new Sharpen Advantage enterprise solution is now available to higher education institutions.
Click here to read the original press release.
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