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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

McGraw-Hill Launches SmartBook at CES

An update to the college textbook was among the new innovations introduced at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. McGraw-Hill Education launched SmartBooks, an adaptive approach to textbooks that acts as a virtual tutor to focus on the individual student’s area of study needs.

“This is about breaking a model that isn’t really working,” Brian Kibby, president of McGraw Hill Higher Education, told The Wall Street Journal.

Available for PCs, Macs, and iOS and Android mobile devices, SmartBook give students an overview of the content in a preview of each chapter. Students then answer a series of questions presented by the software and the textbook recommends material to study, tracks the student’s progress, and continues to update material to view.

SmartBook is part of the LearnSmart Advantage software suite from McGraw-Hill and will be available in the spring for more than 90 courses. Prices for SmartBook were not announced, but the LearnSmart suite starts at $19.99 and can be purchased or rented semester.