ALEKS® Web-Based Tutor offered by McGraw-Hill Wins Codie Award

McGraw-Hill Higher Education today announced that ALEKS (Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces) has been named the Best Postsecondary Education Instructional Solution by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). ALEKS is produced by ALEKS Corporation and is distributed by McGraw-Hill Higher Education and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill in the high school market.

The SIIA's Codie Award is the software industry's most prestigious and recognized peer award. Each year, software, information and education companies from around the globe compete for their place in the winners' circle with more than 800 nominations received for the 2004 competition.

ALEKS is a Web-based learning assistant that interacts with each individual student and functions as a one-on-one tutor to provide targeted mathematics and business instruction. ALEKS includes course management tools for instructors, generates progress reports for individual students and measures overall class performance. ALEKS is available for a number of postsecondary subjects, from basic math through financial accounting.

"We are honored that our peers have recognized the effectiveness of this state-of-the-art learning tool," said JP Lenney, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education Online Learning. "This confirms what we are hearing from educators who have used the program to improve student performance."

ALEKS has been used successfully by over 250,000 postsecondary students nationwide. Professor Harold Royer at Miami-Dade College in Miami, Florida, tested the program in one of his financial accounting classes and has seen dramatic improvements in student performance. "As I predicted, there was a dramatic improvement in this class compared to the average of all my other Financial Accounting classes over the past year and a half. Counting the grades of A, B, and C as passing grades, this class had a 35% improvement over the average of seven other Financial Accounting classes," said Royer.

In addition to its use in the post-secondary market, ALEKS also has been launched successfully at the K-12 level. "We've had great success with ALEKS; the increases in our test scores have been dramatic. We've seen our ALEKS students raise their Stanford 9 scores by as much as 12 national percentile ranking points," Steve Garretson, teacher and PC support manager, Irvine Unified School District, Irvine, California. "When you're preparing students for standardized testing, it's helpful to know if there are specific areas the entire class needs help to master. ALEKS' continual assessment really makes those topics stand out and we can focus on them in class."

For additional information on ALEKS solutions for postsecondary levels, visit http://www.mhhe.com/aleks/. For K-12 level ALEKS solutions, visit http://www.k12.aleks.com/ .

About McGraw-Hill Education

Glencoe/McGraw-Hill and McGraw-Hill Higher Education are part of McGraw-Hill Education, the premier provider of teaching and learning solutions for the pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, post-secondary, higher education and professional markets. It is a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, a global information services provider meeting worldwide needs in the financial services, education and business information markets through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's and Business Week. The Corporation has more than 280 offices in 40 countries. Sales in 2003 were $4.8 billion. Additional information is available at http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/.

About ALEKS

ALEKS Corporation develops and makes available a proprietary educational technology on the Internet. Originally developed at the University of California with major funding from the National Science Foundation, ALEKS uses recent theoretical advances in mathematical cognitive science to power its unique artificial intelligence engine. Additional information is available at http://www.aleks.com/.

SOURCE: McGraw-Hill Higher Education

CONTACT: April Hattori
McGraw-Hill Education
(212) 904-2078
april_hattori@mcgraw-hill.com
April Josephson
ALEKS Corporation
(714) 245-7191 ext. 104
april@aleks.com

Web site: http://www.mheducation.com/
http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/
http://www.aleks.com/