McGraw-Hill Higher Education Develops Tool to Unlock Content for Sakai Learning Management Platform

Today's professors are looking for online content and products that are easy to implement and provide quality educational materials efficiently and effectively through a fully customized learning experience. To address this need, McGraw-Hill Higher Education announces the development of Katana, a new online learning tool designed to deliver McGraw-Hill content within the Sakai platform for complete course customization for instructors.

"McGraw-Hill is committed to identifying and developing innovative solutions for the dynamic higher education world, and the company is eager to continue working with members of the Sakai community," said Jeff Schultz, vice president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education's Learning Solutions. "We are pleased to introduce Katana which makes McGraw-Hill content available for integration into the Sakai platform and provides access for the online learning community, professors and students worldwide."

Sakai is a collaborative, community-driven open source learning management system (LMS) that provides institutions more control over costs and offers increased ease of use. Sakai's development model is called "Community Source" because many of the developers creating Sakai are drawn from the "community" of organizations that have adopted and are using Sakai. Many users of Sakai deploy it to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration. Some of the universities currently invested in and running a Sakai-based learning platform include the University of Cambridge, Indiana University and the University of Michigan.

"We are excited that McGraw-Hill has developed Katana and is becoming increasingly active in the Sakai community," said Michael Korcuska, Executive Director, Sakai Foundation. "By developing a necessary tool to enable the easy distribution of high-quality educational content directly within Sakai, McGraw-Hill is providing additional options for enhancing the online learning experience. I'm sure the Sakai community will find many ways to use these new choices to improve the online learning experience for students and faculty."

Katana allows the easy development of a flexible, more robust learning experience within Sakai and unlocks the power of the platform in the development of publisher-vetted content-based online courses. By allowing integration of McGraw-Hill content, Katana gives professors the ability to more successfully leverage and customize the Sakai platform, providing a dynamic, quality experience for students.

Katana was created through the alliance of McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions and The ETUDES Consortium, and leverages the code-base of the Melete Lesson Builder, developed by ETUDES. It is designed to efficiently deliver and display McGraw-Hill content in the Sakai platform and was unveiled to the online learning community at the 9th Sakai Conference at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris, France, July 1-3, 2008. It is available online now and can be accessed at http://www.mhlearningsolutions.com/katana.

  For more information on Sakai visit http://sakaiproject.org/.

  About McGraw-Hill Higher Education Learning Solutions

McGraw-Hill Higher Education's Learning Solutions team combines digital and printed content, technology, and curriculum-development services to deliver holistic "learning by design" solutions. Additional information is available at http://www.onlinelearning.com/. McGraw-Hill Higher Education is a unit of McGraw-Hill Education, a leading global provider of instructional, assessment and reference solutions that empower professionals and students of all ages. McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), is located in 33 countries and publishes in more than 40 languages.

About McGraw-Hill Higher Education

McGraw-Hill Higher Education is a premier provider of teaching and learning solutions for the post-secondary and higher education markets worldwide. It is a unit of McGraw-Hill Education, a leading global provider of instructional, assessment and reference solutions that empower professionals and students of all ages. McGraw-Hill Education has offices in 33 countries and publishes in more than 40 languages. Additional information is available at http://www.mheducation.com/.

   Contact:
   Tom Stanton
   McGraw-Hill Education
   (212) 904-3214
   tom_stanton@mcgraw-hill.com

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SOURCE: McGraw-Hill Higher Education

CONTACT: Tom Stanton
McGraw-Hill Education
(212) 904-3214
tom_stanton@mcgraw-hill.com

Web site: http://www.mheducation.com/
http://www.mhlearningsolutions.com/katana
http://sakaiproject.org/