How McGraw Hill Powers Personalized Learning with Student-Centered Solutions

Chalk up another bit of crazy pandemic business—While McGraw Hill Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Shawn K. Smith and Dr. Dylan Arena, Co-Founder and CEO of Kidaptive, have never met in person, they have still been able to work a major acquisition into the fold of an iconic education brand. In this episode of EdTech Today, the pair details just how you do something like that and trade insights into how personalized learning will continue to evolve.

McGraw Hill announced that it has acquired Kidaptive, Inc., an adaptive learning platform company with industry-leading expertise in learning science, early learning, and data analytics worldwide.

Kidaptive’s world-class team of learning scientists, psychometricians, data scientists and engineers will join a new Center for Innovation within McGraw Hill’s School group, led by Smith, who joined the company in November 2020. The team is focused on developing smarter and lighter student-centered solutions that will power even more personalized learning experiences.

“Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’ve seen just how important it is for teachers and students to have access to digital tools that give them personalized, equitable support. This work has never been more urgent.” – Dr. Shawn K. Smith

“We see tremendous potential in this combination of McGraw Hill’s content development expertise, vast curriculum inventory and extensive student interaction data with Kidaptive’s ability to pinpoint each student’s position on a personal learning journey,” said Sean Ryan, President of McGraw Hill’s School group. “This is about delivering precision at scale to the benefit of students, teachers and families.”

All Kidaptive employees will be joining McGraw Hill following the acquisition. “The Kidaptive team is thrilled to join McGraw Hill and bring to scale the ideas and innovations we’ve worked so hard to develop over the last 10 years,” said Arena.

“With learning science as our guide, we’re continuing to pursue a future where students are able to get the support, content and instruction they need at the moment they need it,” said Smith. “Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’ve seen just how important it is for teachers and students to have access to digital tools that give them personalized, equitable support. This work has never been more urgent.”

The acquisition of Kidaptive is one of several McGraw Hill has made since it became an independent company in 2013, with a focus on strengthening the company’s capabilities in adaptive and digital learning. Those include ALEKS Corporation in 2013, the LearnSmart technology in 2014 and Redbird Advanced Learning in 2016.

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