McGraw-Hill and Knovation Team Up, Bringing Engrade Users Searchable and Curated Online Resources

AUSTIN, Texas, March 7, 2016 – McGraw-Hill, a learning science company, and a leader in online resource curation, today announced a collaboration to expand and simplify educators’ and students’ access to professionally-evaluated, standards-aligned digital content. The companies will provide users of McGraw-Hill's Engrade, a learning management and assessment platform for K-12 education, access to the Knovation Content Collection with more than 360,000 online learning resources, including videos, white papers, games, podcasts and articles using a single integrated search.

Engrade unifies the data, curriculum and tools that educators use every day to drive student achievement and inform district educational strategy. Supporting open standards, Engrade seamlessly integrates all of a district’s content and assessment providers through one site with one sign-on, bringing together the delivery of digital instructional content, assessments and student performance data.

Every resource in the Knovation Content Collection goes through a rigorous certification process that includes vetting for relevancy and standard-alignment, and tagging each resource according to a variety of criteria for searchability. As a result, educators trust that the resources found in the Knovation Content Collection, including Open Educational Resources (OER), is ready to be incorporated into instruction.

“Learning technology has advanced more in the last five years than the last fifty, but a lack of openness done in the right way is one of the key factors keeping it from having the massive effect on results that it should,” said Stephen Laster, chief digital officer of McGraw-Hill. “We’re excited to partner with Knovation to support a more open, collaborative and easy-to-use learning environment. By providing Engrade users with simpler access to high-quality curated OER, we can accomplish our goals by putting students and educators in a better position to achieve theirs.”

Knovation brings order to a wealth of free online resources, including OER, by selecting, evaluating, tagging and maintaining a collection including resources from hundreds of K-12 content providers. Experienced classroom teachers and curriculum experts evaluate and tag the resources in the Knovation Content Collection, ensuring instructional relevance and comprehensive coverage for all grade levels, subject areas and learning needs.

“Long before digital transformation or OER were trending topics, we realized that free online resources could engage students and improve learning if they were well organized and presented for easy access,” added Randy Wilhelm, chief executive officer of Knovation. “There’s no better company for us to join forces with than McGraw-Hill; combining the power of their adaptive learning technologies with Knovation’s expertly curated online learning resources takes personal learning to the next level by empowering schools to offer each student an experience that is tailored to their individual learning styles.”

To learn more about how Knovation’s curated online resources will be integrated into Engrade, please visit McGraw-Hill's SXSWedu lounge at the Hilton Austin Downtown, Room 406.