In 2010, Professor Sharon Feaster began offering Connect Anatomy & Physiology to her students as an extra study tool. In 2011, when she required students to complete homework assignments within Connect, she witnessed dramatic improvement in student grades, pass rates and retention. During the Fall 2011 semester when Connect was required, 22% more students passed the course and 29% more students completed the course than during the previous semester. Read this CASE STUDY to find out why Professor Feaster credits Connect with having made a real difference for her students.

Professor Feaster says, “I observed that A students are going to make A’s regardless of what is asked of them. The Connect and LearnSmart assignments force all of the students to study in a variety of ways [...] which evidently improves their understanding.” The data backs this up, showing that Connect made a significant difference for students who might have otherwise withdrawn from or failed the course or who may not learned the material well enough to pass the course. As a result, Professor Feaster “absolutely” recommends Connect to other faculty.

Congratulations to all the winners in the Get Connected and Win Student Video Contest!

We asked students across the country to create a video about McGraw-Hill Connect and how it has helped them. So many excellent videos came in that it was hard for our panel of judges to decide, but the winners have been posted! Check them out at GetConnectedandWin.com.

We invited students from all over the country to share how McGraw-Hill Connect® is enhancing their learning experience.  They had some amazing things to say.  Check out the Top 50 videos here and vote for your favorites to help these students win a scholarship, iPad or other great prize!

Winning videos will be featured on several McGraw-Hill websites and social media channels, and the top 3 prizes include a $5,000, $2,000, and $1,000 scholarship.

Dr. Lynda Haas, Associate Director of Composition and Course Director at the University of California, needed a way to standardize the department’s grammar and language instruction. She chose Connect® Composition as a framework to help facilitate this initiative. Today, Dr. Haas uses Connect as the course shell she prepares for 100 instructors and teaching assistants across the campus. Read this CASE STUDY to learn how students have shown improvement on every rubric measure.

According to Dr. Haas, “The majority of instructors at UCI who use Connect Composition in their classes believe that it has improved their students’ writing.” The success that instructors and students have had with Connect has led to its implementation in fully online classes at UCI. The department has also created a new class, Hum29, with Connect at the center, serving as a two-hour online “helper” class for students in composition courses with extensive ESL issues. In the future, the department plans to require students in all Writing 39B sections – about 70 – to complete both the diagnostic and the final essay within Connect Composition. The rubric and related Connect reports will give Haas’s department empirical data on student progress in every class offered for the very first time.

Professor Lisa McKinney wanted to maximize her course lecture time without spending time on repetitive problems demonstrating lower-level concepts and reviewing homework. Professor McKinney and her colleagues decided to implement Connect Accounting as a way to ensure students learned this critical material outside of class. Faculty realized quickly that that students preferred Connect Accounting, which offered greater awareness of required homework assignments leading to students spending more time working on problems outside of course lectures and increasing quiz and exam averages and most of all pass rates!

“I feel that learning is higher because of the additional practice. Students in the lower and middle percentiles of the class are doing better because of the repetition and drilling provided through Connect.”

In addition to the increase in student grades, Professor McKinney has found that attendance and retention rates have also risen since implementing Connect Accounting.

“Class attendance has gone up since we began using Connect Accounting, because students are responsible for a challenging homework assignment each week. Prior to using Connect, attendance for my sections was 75%. Since using Connect, attendance has increased to 90% or more. Connect Accounting keeps students in class each week because they want to know how to successfully complete the assignments.”

Professor McKinney “absolutely” plans to continue using Connect Accounting, and will recommend it to other faculty members. The time savings that Connect offers through auto-grading assignments and reinforcing key course concepts has enabled Professor McKinney to cover a wider variety of content and problems, making the course now more comprehensive for students. Professor McKinney and her colleagues were also pleased with the tangible results in a number of course success metrics across multiple sections.

Learn more about Professor McKinney’s experience with McGraw-Hill Connect through this CASE STUDY.