McGraw Hill Education
While the company has shifted its print-centered business model to become a digital innovator and leader — “technology has the potential to elevate teaching and learning to the level demanded by the global knowledge economy,” according to McGraw-Hill Education’s president — many news media reports and some educational officials continue to question the role of the educational publisher in today’s society where e-books and virtual schools are gaining visibility and the hardbound textbook is considered a heavy and expensive relic. Complicating the issue is the controversial topic of “open source” content, which allows schools and other academic institutions to aggregate and use content that is freely available on the Internet, potentially eliminating the need for professional publishing companies.
To help McGraw-Hill achieve its business goals in the digital education era, RF|Binder has directed its efforts to establishing the company as the leader in the development of high-quality digital education products and services, and to positioning digital as a solution to many of the challenges faced by the country’s K-12 and higher educational systems, including student engagement and retention, college and career readiness, and graduation. Among McGraw-Hill Education’s solutions are personalized digital learning tools and platforms that help bring the student-teacher ratio in classrooms close to 1:1, which research has shown to provide the most effective learning environment.
RF|Binder has worked closely with McGraw-Hill Education to create an overarching digital strategy that includes: proactive media relations with influential consumer tech and educational tech reporters; a thought leadership program that puts the company’s experts front and center on the most important issues in education technology; and a social media presence anchored by Twitter that builds and extends McGraw-Hill Education’s overall brand, promotes the company as a social media-savvy developer of innovative digital solutions, and positions it as a prominent voice in today’s education conversation.
In higher education, we have conducted successful outreach on the role of tablets on university campuses; the effectiveness of course management and adaptive learning systems on students’ grades and lecture quality; and the need for development education reform in America.
On the K-12 front, RF|Binder has publicized McGraw-Hill’s partnership with Intel to create the first digital notebook designed specifically for elementary school students, as well as the company’s foray into educational gaming, apps and mobile learning, cloud-based learning systems, and subscription-based services. We’ve also successfully promoted McGraw-Hill’s partnership with Apple to create the first-ever titles for the iPad through the iBooks platform.
“With students, school districts and universities snapping up iPads, Apple teamed up with publishers, including McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP), to build interactive schoolbooks so the tablet can replace heavy tomes that have long weighed down backpacks. The new service, built with involvement from Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs before his death, is designed to kick-start the nascent electronic-textbook business so a broad range of authors can get material to students in a digital format.” ― Adam Satariano and Edmund Lee, Bloomberg