BLOG | Macmillan Learning Acquires Intellus Learning, an Educational Platform as a Service Company for Higher Education

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK (PRWEB) JANUARY 17, 2017

Macmillan Learning today announced the acquisition of Intellus Learning, an educational platform as a service company that gathers information across institutions to help faculty and administrators find and evaluate the best, most affordable digital content for each learner while providing actionable data on course engagement and success.

Using a patented approach to machine learning, Intellus indexes the millions of content learning objects in use at an institution and provides real-time analytics on student usage. By organizing the wealth of digital learning assets owned or licensed by the institution, the platform provides transparency to all stakeholders to better inform resource allocation and instructional design.

Commenting on the partnership, Macmillan Learning CEO Ken Michaels said, “Our customers are rightfully focused on providing the most affordable learning experience that engages students and lifts their performance, while providing early student retention transparency. Finding the right mix of content and tools that answers both teaching and institutional objectives can be challenging. This partnership will facilitate the alignment of teaching objectives with administrative goals and student preferences, while not sacrificing quality instruction or diminishing student outcomes.”

The National Center for Education Statistics states that university libraries spend an estimated $2.6 billion on academic resources. Filtering the massive amounts of content in use at colleges and universities is complex and leads to disjointed approaches to content and budget management.

“Intellus’s platform surfaces the best learning tools for students by matching teaching and learning objectives to all available materials. It is incredibly powerful,” said Susan Winslow, Managing Director for Macmillan Learning. “At Macmillan Learning, our goal has always been to provide the best educational content and tools for educators. Intellus allows us to continue that work while supporting institutional budgetary and retention goals.”

Founded in 2011, Intellus has indexed over 50 million online learning resources such as books, articles, videos, and digital content items by spanning library archives, publisher and institutional databases, as well as major open educational resource (OER) repositories.

“Our platform provides greater visibility for educators so they can better control each course outcome,” said Intellus founder and CEO, David Kim. “That is our mission: to make teaching and learning easier for faculty by providing a personalized and affordable learning experience for students.”

The Intellus platform is already being used at a variety of institutions, including California State University. Gerry Hanley, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Technology Services at California State University stated, “One of our innovative campuses adopted Intellus in 2015 to enable their faculty to explore and choose the more affordable and high-quality learning materials for their students. The Intellus platform has helped us better support CSU faculty to quickly and easily discover potential course materials from a wide range of publisher, library, and open educational resources collections, which in turn provides our faculty more time to choose the best materials for our students’ successful learning.”

“I’m thrilled about the partnership and the opportunity to work with the Macmillan Learning team,” said Mr. Kim. “With the backing of a commercial publisher, we can accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission for more students.”

Intellus Learning will work alongside the Macmillan Learning team, with Mr. Kim reporting directly to Mr. Michaels.

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About Macmillan Learning: 
Macmillan Learning improves lives through learning. Our legacy of excellence in education continues to inform our approach to developing world-class content with pioneering, interactive tools. Through deep partnership with the world’s best researchers, educators, administrators, and developers, we facilitate teaching and learning opportunities that spark student engagement and improve outcomes. We provide educators with tailored solutions designed to inspire curiosity and measure progress. Our commitment to teaching and discovery upholds our mission to improve lives through learning. To learn more, please visit our website or see us on Facebook, Twitter, or join our Macmillan Community.

About Intellus Learning: 
Intellus Learning supports great teaching and learning in higher education with intelligent analytics that help faculty and institutions select the best content for each learner. Through its curation and management platform, Intellus Learning helps align institutional investments with course-level learning objectives to improve transparency and reduce redundancy. Intellus Learning brings faculty insights and student preferences to the forefront of the institutional decision making, creating an environment that prioritizes value. Follow Intellus Learning on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About the California State University: 
The California State University is the largest system of senior higher education in the country, with 23 campuses, 49,000 faculty and staff and 474,600 students. Half of the CSU’s students transfer from California Community Colleges. Created in 1960, the mission of the CSU is to provide high-quality, affordable education to meet the ever changing needs of California. With its commitment to quality, opportunity, and student success, the CSU is renowned for superb teaching, innovative research and for producing job-ready graduates. Each year, the CSU awards more than 105,000 degrees. One in every 20 Americans holding a college degree is a graduate of the CSU and our alumni are 3 million strong. Connect with and learn more about the CSU at the CSU Media Center.