McGraw-Hill Integrates Industry-Leading Chemistry Tool ChemDraw® Into Digital Teaching and Learning Platform

NEW YORK, Aug. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- For professional chemists, drawing chemical structures can be done with the click of a mouse. For students of organic chemistry, however, practicing this essential skill is much more complicated, as the limitations of electronic homework platforms make it difficult to draw chemical structures in a digital environment. To solve this problem, McGraw-Hill Higher Education has partnered with CambridgeSoft to integrate ChemDraw® – the molecular editor used by today's chemistry professionals – into McGraw-Hill Connect Chemistry. Connect Chemistry is a unique web-based assignment and assessment platform designed for organic chemistry courses.  

McGraw-Hill Connect is a research-based, interactive assignment and assessment platform that incorporates cognitive science to customize the learning process.  The online platform is based on McGraw-Hill's extensive, ongoing research of professors' instructional processes and students' study habits and includes a variety of digital learning tools that enable professors to easily customize courses and allow students to learn and master content and succeed in the course.

"By bringing ChemDraw into the classroom, McGraw-Hill Higher Education is helping students develop their knowledge of chemistry by giving them access to the same tools employed by chemistry professionals," said Kurt Strand, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education's Science, Engineering and Mathematics Group. "As McGraw-Hill continues to focus on preparing students for 21st century careers, we are excited to partner with CambridgeSoft, a leader in developing interactive solutions for the chemistry field."

Both students and professors will benefit from the introduction of ChemDraw into Connect Chemistry. Students will be better able to practice drawing chemical structures, one of the subject's most important concepts, and professors will be able to more effectively test students' knowledge, evaluate their progress, and deliver feedback.

"Drawing chemical structures is a basic requirement for any online homework program for organic chemistry, and by integrating ChemDraw into Connect Chemistry, students will now be able to use the gold standard of drawing programs," Strand said. 

"As online homework becomes an integral part of the curriculum, it is vital for the drawing program to not be a barrier," said Dr. Eric Kantorowski, professor of organic chemistry at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. "Students will quickly find that Connect featuring ChemDraw is easy-to-use, intuitive, and comprehensive."

McGraw-Hill and CambridgeSoft have been collaborating for over a year with more than 100 organic chemistry professors to create a functionally modified version of ChemDraw that focuses specifically on the scope of the course. The result is the most accurate assessment and drawing tool available today that brings professional-grade quality to a challenging course area.

The collaboration between McGraw-Hill Education and CambridgeSoft marks the first time that CambridgeSoft has worked with a publisher to develop a homework tool for students. CambridgeSoft is a leading provider of software and services for discovery, analysis and collaboration to the life sciences and chemical industries, academia and government.

"We're excited to collaborate with McGraw-Hill to bring an industry-standard technology for chemistry professionals to the college classroom," said Michael G. Tomasic, president and CEO of CambridgeSoft. "By giving students advanced digital capabilities, ChemDraw will enable them to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for a career in this critical life science field."

ChemDraw will be available for classroom use as a component of McGraw-Hill Connect Chemistry in the spring of 2011. It will initially be offered with three McGraw-Hill texts: Organic Chemistry 3rd edition, by Janice Smith, Organic Chemistry 8th edition, by Frank Carey and Robert Giuliano and Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter & Change 6th edition, by Martin Silberberg.

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.

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About CambridgeSoft:

CambridgeSoft is a leading provider of software and services for discovery, analysis and collaboration to the life sciences and chemical industries, academia and government. Its integrated product suite improves the productivity of researchers in the discovery, development and commercialization of chemical and biological compounds. Products include Cloud, Enterprise, Workgroup and Desktop versions of Chem & Bio Office, including Chem & Bio Draw and E-Notebook, providing knowledge management, chemical and biological informatics, and scientific database solutions. Web sites include ChemBioFinder.Com and ChemBioNews.Com for indexed database content and news, and SciStore.Com for e-commerce.

CambridgeSoft has offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. For information about CambridgeSoft products, services, and sales worldwide, please visit www.cambridgesoft.com, or call 1 617 588-9300 in America, 00 800 875 20000 in Europe or 0120-146-700 in Japan.

SOURCE McGraw-Hill Higher Education