Dear Faculty,

At this time of graduation ceremonies and celebrations, we at McGraw-Hill want to take a minute to congratulate you. We see how hard you have worked to educate our future leaders, and how proud you are now that they are setting off towards the bright futures that lie before them.

We are very proud of our role in partnering with you and your students to make a difference, and we will continue to publish content designed to encourage their highest achievement and success.

Congratulations to you and to all of the students whose lives you have touched!

Professor Bill Hoover wanted to standardize course content across multiple sections being taught by various instructors to deliver effective content regardless of learning styles. Connect® Anatomy and Physiology allowed him to synchronize assignments and assessments, minimize start-up time for new instructors, and offer engaging student materials. Read this CASE STUDY to learn how implementing Connect yielded dramatic 10-15% increases in student performance.

Professor Hoover’s students are also required to complete the LearnSmart adaptive learning modules before lecture, and are encouraged to view recorded lectures through Tegrity, an automated lecture capture service in Connect. He reports that his students love using LearnSmart and say that it makes it easy to come to class prepared, allowing for more discussion and participation during class.

Professor Hoover says, “I had students who were consistently scoring in the low 60’s on each of the weekly quizzes. Once I started assigning homework through Connect, those same students started earning scores in the high 70’s! On average, my students’ performance has risen by 10-15%.”

Professor Lois Bitner Olson had been using a course management system to assign exercises that supported her lectures, but she was frustrated by the amount of time she was spending writing assignments and solving technical problems. She needed a solution that would help students learn to apply the marketing concepts she was teaching, and free her of time spent on solving technical glitches. Connect® Marketing not only addressed both of these needs, but also increased student final average grades by 5-7 points. Learn more about Professor Olson’s experience with Connect in this CASE STUDY.

Professor Olson says, “Connect has made my life easier and my students are doing better. They walk away knowing the concepts, not just learning them for the test. The Connect online exercises, drag and drop, video cases, etc. do a pretty good job of getting students to learn how to apply concepts. That was what first attracted me.”

Prior to using Connect® Psychology, Professor Igor Dolgov faced both academic and administrative challenges in his psychology courses. He sought to improve student engagement and study skills to increase student success, while freeing up time spent on administrative tasks in order to focus on student learning. Read this CASE STUDY to learn how Connect Psychology successfully addressed these challenges, increasing not only engagement, but also student success and retention, resulting in higher exam scores and course grades.

Connect Psychology allowed for Professor Dolgov to administer higher order questions with automatic-grading, saving hours of grading time and enabling Professor Dolgov and his teaching assistants to focus their time and energy on teaching students. He says, “These tools allow me to devote more time to individual students when they are in need of assistance and to keep improving the course from semester to semester.”

Professor Michael Kopenits, biology department chair at Amarillo College, decided to test out the effectiveness of Connect® Anatomy and Physiology, so he offered students an additional 5% on their final grades for completing the assignments in Connect. Read this CASE STUDY to learn how the students who used Connect performed significantly better in the course than those who did not.

Not only did Connect increase student grade point averages by 12.5%, but students are also now more willing to do work outside of the classroom. “Those who have not purchased Connect are encouraged to do so by their fellow students due to improvement in grades,” Professor Kopenits says.

In addition, simply labeling line drawings and answering multiple-choice questions have been taken to a new level with the enhanced interactivity within McGraw-Hill LearnSmart, the adaptive learning platform within Connect. “Students rave about it.”