McGraw-Hill and ALEKS Offer Enhanced Online Tutor for Accounting Course Preparation
PRNewswire
NEW YORK
Oct 5, 2005
McGraw-Hill Higher Education, a premier provider of teaching and learning solutions for the post-secondary and higher education markets worldwide, and ALEKS Corporation, a leader in the creation of web-based artificially intelligent educational software, today announced the release of an enhanced online Accounting Cycle Review tutorial for students entering courses that require a basic knowledge of accounting. ALEKS (Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces) is produced by ALEKS Corporation and distributed in colleges and universities exclusively by McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
The enhanced tutorial enables students to more quickly progress through complicated topics. In addition, students need to answer fewer problems correctly to demonstrate mastery of items. According to Wil Lampros, president of ALEKS Corporation, "This improvement in the ALEKS learning mode will allow students to move through problems in quick succession. As a result, students will be able to complete more items in any given session and will get up to speed on the Accounting Cycle faster."
While The Accounting Cycle Review by ALEKS may be used with accounting textbooks offered by many college publishers, the tutorial is particularly effective when it is used along with McGraw-Hill/Irwin textbooks such as Intermediate Accounting 4th Edition by Spiceland et al. With the online tutorial, instructors spend less class time helping students understand a concept they should have learned in previous accounting courses.
The Accounting Cycle Review by ALEKS is integrated with both Blackboard and WebCT course managements systems. Kevin Kane, president of McGraw- Hill/Irwin, expressed the value of this new feature: "Enabling students and instructors to access their ALEKS accounts with a single sign-on through either of these popular platforms and to automatically import results directly into their grade books provides a great deal of added convenience. We are excited by this new enhancement, which aligns with McGraw-Hill Higher Education's focus on new ways of integrating technology into the classroom to benefit instructors and students."
In addition to these improvements, The Accounting Cycle Review by ALEKS still includes the standard features from the previous version of the product. All the topics are contained in one pie chart that makes it easy for the instructor to monitor the progress of an individual student or an entire class. In addition, an initial assessment determines what the student does and does not know about the Accounting Cycle. This assessment allows ALEKS to determine the specific items the student is ready to work on in the learning mode and will greatly enhance the student's ability to master the content. Both the progress assessments and the review feature reinforce previously learned concepts and ensure mastery.
About McGraw-Hill Higher Education
McGraw-Hill Higher Education is a unit of McGraw-Hill Education, a leading global provider of electronic and print products that enhance teaching and learning in pre-K through Grade 12, 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. The corporation has more than 300 offices in 40 countries. Sales in 2004 were $5.3 billion. Additional information is available at http://www.mheducation.com/.
About ALEKS
ALEKS Corporation is a leader in the creation of web-based artificially intelligent educational software. ALEKS assessment and learning technologies were originally developed by a team of cognitive scientists and software engineers at the University of California, Irvine, with major funding from the National Science Foundation. ALEKS is founded on ground-breaking research in cognitive psychology and applied mathematics. Through adaptive questioning, ALEKS accurately assess a student's knowledge state, and then delivers targeted instruction on the topics a student is most ready to learn.
ALEKS is currently being used by hundreds of thousands of students in over 20 academic subjects ranging from financial accounting to precalculus at over 1000 institutions throughout the world. ALEKS is available for adoption by higher education institutions through McGraw-Hill Higher Education. For additional information about the ALEKS Corporation or its products, visit http://www.aleks.com/.
SOURCE: McGraw-Hill Higher Education
CONTACT: Tom Stanton
Director, Communications
McGraw-Hill Education
(212) 904-3214
tom_stanton@mcgraw-hill.com
Julie Shah
Marketing Coordinator
ALEKS Corporation
(714) 245-7191 ext. 149
Julie@aleks.com