McGraw-Hill Higher Education Grows International Market Through the Expansion of Its Custom Publishing Platform

McGraw-Hill Create enables instructors around the world to digitally design custom classroom content from library of more than 50,000 sources and receive e-books within hours

NEW YORK, April 13, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- McGraw-Hill Higher Education today announced the expanded availability of McGraw-Hill Create, an innovative platform that gives instructors unprecedented control over and customization of university classroom content in English, Italian and Spanish – and by the end of 2011, Chinese and Marathi. Expanding the reach of McGraw-Hill's content, Create is now available at colleges and universities throughout Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, New Zealand, the Middle East and India through the company's international subsidiaries.

The McGraw-Hill Create platform enables instructors to easily customize digital content for their courses, combining their own course-specific materials with a range of other resources. Instructors have instant access to a vast library of McGraw-Hill resources to develop instructional materials adapted specifically to the needs of local markets. At Create's core is a Google-like search engine functionality that enables professors to immediately pull from a wide range of quality content, including 4,000 McGraw-Hill textbooks, 5,500 articles, 11,000 literature, philosophy and humanities readings, and 25,000 business case studies from prominent providers such as the Harvard Business School.

"Through Create, we're giving college and university instructors around the world the opportunity to efficiently assemble course content that meets the specific learning objectives of their courses. This customization greatly enhances the teaching and learning experience, and at a lower cost, since students are only paying for the content they will need to succeed in the course," said Talia Griep, president of McGraw-Hill Education International. "We recognize that custom publishing is one of the fastest growing areas in the higher education market, rising at a rate of 25 percent annually. There's good reason for that. By offering our custom publishing tools to the growing international market, we're responding to faculty needs and putting the power back in their hands when it comes to course content."

To simplify and streamline the custom publishing process, an index and table of contents is automatically generated for each Create project. Create allows instructors to easily save and archive projects to work on at another time or edit for in the future. Instructors can customize the look and feel of their Create project by selecting a cover design and adding their name and course information. Additionally, instructors can share Create projects with colleagues for review, making content customization a collaborative experience.

Once a Create text has been fully customized, the instructor receives a digital review copy in under an hour or a print review copy in three to five days. This represents a marked improvement over existing platforms, which often take up to three weeks to deliver review copies. Once an instructor finalizes the book in Create, he or she can make it available for student purchase.

McGraw-Hill Education was the first publisher to introduce custom publishing to colleges and universities nearly 20 years ago. Create builds on that foundation by adding 21st century customization options, sophisticated search capabilities, intuitive drag-and-drop user interface and speedy digital delivery.

Through a partnership with Blackboard Inc., instructors have the ability to access the full suite of McGraw-Hill Create content through their Blackboard account, seamlessly integrating Create with their established and familiar classroom tools. Instructors can also easily upload and incorporate self-produced content into their Create project.

The international expansion of Create strengthens McGraw-Hill Higher Education's global presence. McGraw-Hill Connect, a web-based assignment and assessment platform, has been available through McGraw-Hill subsidiaries around the world since it was launched in 2009. In the last year, international Connect users have dramatically increased from approximately 1,000 units across six countries in 2009 to more than 40,000 registrations across 28 countries in 2010.

About McGraw-Hill Higher Education:

McGraw-Hill Higher Education, a unit of McGraw-Hill Education, is a leading innovator in the development of 21st century teaching and learning solutions for postsecondary and higher education markets worldwide. Through a comprehensive range of traditional and digital education content and tools focused on improving student learning outcomes, McGraw-Hill Higher Education empowers and prepares professionals and students to connect, learn and succeed in the global economy. McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), has offices in 33 countries and publishes in more than 65 languages. Additional information is available at http://www.mheducation.com.