Case Study: McGraw-Hill Education achieves personalized, scalable learning for millions with Couchbase

McGraw-Hill Education Personalized learning experiences for millions of users

McGraw-Hill Education, a global learning-science company, set out to transform its traditional publishing business into a digital platform that could scale to millions of users while supporting open content, third‑party metadata and interactive apps. After testing XML databases, SQL, in‑memory grids and enterprise search servers without achieving the needed scalability, MHE faced the challenge of delivering rich, personalized learning experiences at massive scale.

MHE implemented Couchbase Server combined with Elasticsearch to build a self‑adapting learning portal: content and metadata (text, video, images) are indexed for lightning‑fast access, user behaviors automatically enrich learner profiles, and those profiles are incorporated into search queries to deliver personalized results. The solution enabled highly dynamic, content‑rich applications and individualized experiences for millions of users.

McGraw-Hill Education

Christopher Tse

Director, MHE Labs