McGraw-Hill Education To Enable Personalized Learning Experiences
This fall, McGraw-Hill
Education will launch new technology in
conjunction with Microsoft that will allow educators to build their own "compound
learning objects" that can be adapted to individual classes or even
students.
Company representatives said this launch marks a
significant step in
moving McGraw-Hill Education from a publisher to a "learning science"
company
that meets the demands of educators and students to combine elements
from
multiple sources to create personalized learning experiences.
"We're committed to becoming the world's foremost
learning
sciences company, and we see open technology as a key element of our
future,"
said McGraw-Hill Education President and CEO David Levin.
Teachers will be able to use Microsoft's
Office Mix, an
extension of Microsoft PowerPoint that will be free to the education
community,
to incorporate multiple digital content and assessment items from a
catalogue of
McGraw-Hill Education content and technology and create a learning
object with
a specific learning objective.
Levin said the compound learning object will be the
centerpiece of all the company's K-12 products in the future, followed
eventually by the same concepts in higher education.
In reorganizing its development models around the
compound
learning objects, McGraw-Hill Education said it hopes going forward to:
- Create smaller chunks of content that can be easily
revised,
updated, used and assembled with other chunks of content to meet
changing needs;
- Generate the necessary date to support
analytics-driven
instruction and learning; and
- Build repositories of aggregated content that can be
deployed
quickly and efficiently.
"We know that students and educators want learning
experiences
that are deeply personal," Levin added, "and often this means combining
content
from multiple sources, including content they have produced themselves."
McGraw-Hill Education is working with researchers at
New York
University to develop new potential products focused around the compound
learning objects.
"When teachers and students are given the chance to
engage
with compound objects in adaptive learning environments, they
personalize how
and when they learn, resulting in active experiences that deliver
superior
outcomes," said Robert N. Ubell, vice dean of online learning at New
York
University's Polytechnic School of Engineering.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.