HCT to become first MENA institution to pilot SmartBook product

DUBAI, Thursday, May 2, 2013: The Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) will be the first institution in the MENA region to pilot McGraw Hill Education's  SmartBook product, which was announced today during the launch of a new range of educational tools.

HCT and McGraw Hill Education (MHE) signed a Memorandum of Understanding facilitating the  Smartbook pilot, resulting in HCT, the UAE's largest higher education institution, becoming one of a selected few institutions in the world to pilot the Smartbook.

The MOU signing took place during the launch, at the HCT Dubai Men's College, of McGraw-Hill Education's LearnSmart Advantage - a new suite of educational products, which constitutes LearnSmart, LearnSmart Prep, LearnSmart Achieve, LearnSmart Labs and SmartBook.

SmartBook is the first adaptive reading tool in the higher education market worldwide and the SmartBook pilot will align with the HCT's objective to provide formative, self-study reading resources to students. It will be conducted in line with the current outcome based, customized business courses as an additional self-study tool for students.

Dr. Phil Quirke, HCT Director of Academic Affairs, said the partnership with MHE was an excellent development as MHE adopts the belief that showcasing new approaches to education can be achieved in collaboration with industry-leading institutions.

"The HCT is delighted to host the McGraw Hill international launch of its LearnSmart SmartBook at the Dubai Men's College campus. The MoU with McGraw-Hill is part of the HCT's strategic vision to bring learning and instruction into the 21st century, with endless possibilities to develop knowledge and skills through the integration of mobile learning technology into curriculum, teaching, learning, and assessment," Dr. Quirke said.  

"The LearnSmart SmartBook takes traditional and blended learning to the next level of student mobile learning and also towards seamless program development, where the students' skills are transferable and 'real world'.  HCT is proud to be the innovative eLearning solutions leader throughout the region and the global launch of the SmartBook is a true reflection of our position as a world leader in Education Technology," he added.

During the launch, HCT highlighted its successes with its "Learning by Doing" philosophy as a result of the integration of transformative educational technologies within its curriculum, starting with its Foundations Program.

"Since the launch of LearnSmart in 2009, we've developed a deep understanding of how personalized learning through adaptive technology helps improve student performance," Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education, said.

"Bringing our expertise and proven effectiveness in adaptive learning to new areas of the learning experience represents an enormous opportunity, both for McGraw-Hill Education and students, instructors and institutions across the country. With the launch of SmartBook and the rest of the LearnSmart Advantage suite, we continue to lead higher education in using adaptive technology to help improve student performance," he concluded.

The LearnSmart Advantage suite builds on the success of McGraw-Hill LearnSmart, the company's industry leading adaptive study tool. With more than one million unique student users answering more than one billion questions through LearnSmart since its launch in 2009, McGraw-Hill Education has been able to use its unparalleled data and insights into how students learn to refine its adaptive capabilities and apply them to new areas of the learning experience - in effect creating a fully adaptive course. McGraw-Hill Education will make the LearnSmart Advantage suite available to students through instructors and institutions as well as through direct purchase.

LearnSmart is the only adaptive learning program proven to effectively assess a student's knowledge of basic course content and help them master it. By considering both confidence level and responses to actual content questions, LearnSmart identifies what an individual student knows and doesn't know and builds an optimal learning path, so that they spend less time on concepts they already know and more time on those they don't. LearnSmart also predicts when a student will forget concepts and introduces remedial content to prevent this. The result is that LearnSmart's adaptive learning path helps students learn faster, study more efficiently, and retain more knowledge, allowing instructors to focus valuable class time on higher-level concepts.

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About McGraw Hill Education
McGraw-Hill Education is a digital learning company that draws on its more than 100 years of educational expertise to offer solutions that improve learning outcomes around the world. McGraw-Hill Education is the adaptive education technology leader with the vision for creating a highly personalized learning experience that prepares students of all ages for the world that waits.  The Company has offices across North America, India, China, Europe, the Middle East and South America, and makes its learning solutions available in more than 65 languages.  For additional information, visit www.mheducation.com

About Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT)
Founded in 1988 with four colleges, the Higher Colleges of Technology have grown to be the largest of the higher educational institutions in the UAE, gaining a well-respected reputation for innovative learning. More than 18,000 students attend 17 modern men's and women's campuses in the cities of Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah, Fujairah and the western region cities of Madinat Zayed and Ruwais.

HCT offers a wide range of English-taught programs in Applied Communications, Business, Education, Engineering Technology, Computer & Information Science, General Education and Health Sciences.  These programs are all relevant to the UAE's fast growing and evolving economic sectors.  All programs are designed in consultation with business and industry leaders to ensure that the skills students learn are job-relevant and to high standards. They are constantly monitored to ensure they are at the cutting edge of industry standards and technological change. Visit www.hct.ac.ae. Follow us on Facebook  hctuae and Twitter @hctuae

For more information contact:
Paul Lancaster, HCT Communication Department. PH: 050 616 0964. Email: paul.lancaster@hct.ac.ae

© Press Release 2013