Providing students with alternative learning paths outside of the classroom
Educational AI Product and Feature Offerings
Overview
McGraw Hill is an educational publishing company that supports digital learning with its platforms and authored content. With over 50% of postsecondary students now using digital platforms,
As AI tools like ChatGPT increased in popularity with students, McGraw Hill saw potential to explore and offer its own AI products to shape how students interact with AI inside and outside of the classroom. Through close collaboration with the AI product owner, we pushed conversations forward on what ethical, learner-focused AI tools look like, resulting in the release of AI Reader in SmartBook, and more importantly, more educational resources to students when they need an extra push.
Role
Product Designer
Duration
6 months
Empathize
Business Opportunity
In mid-2024, McGraw Hill launched AI Reader, a tool embedded directly into their eBook experiences that lets students highlight text and ask for alternative explanations, simpler language, or test their knowledge with quick quizzes.
AI Reader in eBook
Student usage was high, and McGraw Hill wanted to expand AI Reader into SmartBook, an enhanced eBook experience with adaptive modules that quiz students to determine which learning concepts (yellow and blue highlights) they should focus on.
SmartBook Highlighted Concepts (Left), SmartBook Adaptive Questions (Right)
With the addition of concepts and questions,
Finding Smartbook's Happy Path
Students using SmartBook follow a specific learning path: they read content, answer embedded questions, and are guided through learning concepts they don't feel confident about. When students need extra help, AI Reader found a natural home alongside SmartBook's adaptive feedback.
Opportunity
Supporting Without Shortcuts
When students are stuck, their first instinct is to ask ChatGPT for the answer. So, a natural additional feature was to provide students with AI Reader right after missing a concept.
However, after observing students interact with a prototype, we noticed two glaring issues:
Authored content can and often is entirely skipped. This runs the risk of allowing students to learn hallucinations first, written content second.
Students more often than not end up seeking the easy path (AI), rather than first trying to grasp a concept.
Effectively, we were preventing students from achieving the Apply and Analyze thinking skills in Bloom's Taxonomy.
For students to learn most effectively, AI needed to be a second option, not a default. Rather than integrate AI Reader directly into the question flow, AI Reader stayed only in the eBook.
Digging deeper through talks with authors, teachers, and students, three things were clear:
SmartBook's main purpose is to help student's learn concepts. The highlighted sections are most important.
Giving students answers would immediately break teachers' trust in the tool.
Students already find SmartBook lengthy. Knowledge checks need to be obviously optional.
At first, we transformed AI Reader into a popup for each concept.
But we lost persistent history, flexibility with non-concept selections, positive mobile experiences, and hiding AI reader in the toolbar made it almost non-existent when tested.
One standout feature that users overwhelmingly found useful was the direct AI Reader button next to concepts.
Feature expansion
Students don't just read eBooks – they watch lectures, review notes, and study for exams. How might we support overall learning?
Context Agnostic Tools (CATs)
Business Opportunity
AI reader is focused and limited in a good way, but learners do much more than reading ebooks. We found demand in generating flashcards, video lecture summaries, and more. From a global student portal perspective, how could we offer the benefits of ai readers and that it offers an alternative learning path to existing resources throughout our platform, and provide a collective study space for learners to use these learning resources?
Discovering Value
Student Learning Behaviors
First, we took stock of what students were already doing across our platform, and what could bring them value.
McGraw Hill had multiple study materials like Sharpen and AI Reader, but the experiences were disconnected, so we looked into how others created centralized spaces for tools.
Then, we explored how others like Quizlet generate AI focused study materials.
Bringing CATs to Life
Getting Content Generated Seamlessly
From the wireframe explorations, an always present, dedicated CATs button was a clear winner with students.
A study space that brought together all their AI-assisted learning, regardless of where it was created was needed.
Reflection
This project pushed me to work with minimal, blue-sky requirements, which was possible because of the trust between the AI Product Owner, Learning Scientist, existing designers, developers, and myself to rely on each other's expertise.
Another takeaway was from the positive foundation we had. We weren't fixing broken products or solving major usability issues. Instead, we were enhancing already solid learning experiences with AI capabilities. A "making good products even better" mindset created space for genuine innovation and experimentation, something I want to carry into future projects.