McGraw-Hill Education Buys Lecture Capture Company Tegrity

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/04/10

McGraw-Hill Education has just acquired Tegrity, a privately held company that provides a product for lecture capture. Tegrity's Campus technology has been a part of Connect, the larger company's Web-based online learning assignment and assessment platform for colleges and universities, which was launched in fall 2009. McGraw-Hill is shortly expected to release version 2.0 of Connect, which will continue featuring the lecture capture functionality.

Tegrity's service provides a searchable digital video recorder for the classroom. Institutional customers can automatically record every class for later viewing by students on PCs, Macs, and mobile devices. The recordings, which can be stored at the customer site or on Tegrity-hosted servers, can also be accessed through a Facebook account.

The company has a patented search feature that enables students to search course recordings for any word or phrase presented in class as text--whether, for example, it was part of a PowerPoint slide, in a computer application, or shown on the screen. The system returns a list of references with associated thumbnails and titles to every point where that text was presented in class. The user can start playing back the video at that point, once the reference is clicked. Students can also navigate through courses from beginning to end or work through an automatically generated visual index.

According to Peter Davis, president of McGraw-Hill Education, Tegrity turned out to be one of the most popular features in Connect. "Students have repeatedly told us that the ability to go back and review material presented in class anytime, anywhere is their most powerful tool for studying and learning," he said.

An FAQ posted on the Tegrity Web site assures customers that Tegrity Campus will continue to be offered as a stand-alone service. "There are only plans for continuous improvement and innovation for the service; and the additional resources Tegrity will enjoy as a result of this acquisition will make for a superior Tegrity Campus service in the future for our customers," the question and answer page states.

The company claims 200 customers among colleges and universities. Those include the University of Texas-Pan American, Columbus State University, Michigan Technological Institute, and two University of Missouri campuses, Columbia and Kansas City.

"We are thrilled to become part of McGraw-Hill Education," said Tegrity CEO, Isaac Segal. "As a company, our mission has always been to help institutions improve student success, and having the resources of McGraw-Hill behind the service will only strengthen our ability to fulfill this mission. Furthermore, a deeper coupling of Tegrity's ability to cost-effectively distribute user-generated digital content with McGraw-Hill Education's digital teaching and learning platform will provide for some very exciting capabilities for students."

Tegrity, which has offices in Santa Clara, CA and Israel, will maintain its current staffing and locations. In fact, McGraw-Hill Education said the Israel facility would provide the headquarters for a presence in that country.

The price of the purchase wasn't disclosed, and Tegrity will remain intact as a legal entity.