In a recent Executive Order from the White House on AI, President Biden encouraged the industry to “shape AI’s potential to transform education by creating resources to support educators deploying AI-enabled educational tools, such as personalized tutoring in schools.” We’ve known since research completed in the 1980s that personalized tutoring is significantly more effective than “factory models of education,” and I have spent a good portion of my career considering how human-centered product design and technology can help fulfill the promise of personalized learning.  The time is now. This fall, I’ve watched with great interest and excitement as our teams at Macmillan Learning have tested personalized tutoring with thousands of students in courses in our digital courseware product, Achieve.  Early results indicate that AI-enhanced personalized tutoring positively impacts student engagement and progress, especially at times when they need help with assignments. Without giving answers away, the AI-powered tutor uses socratic-style questions delivered in a chatbot to help guide students step-by-step to the correct conclusion. Importantly, we have seen that whereas students sometimes feel self-conscious asking their instructor or teaching assistants for help, they are open and persistent with the AI tutor, asking questions repeatedly until they gain better understanding. Faculty have also responded positively, noting that the AI tutor is available late at night or generally when faculty and teaching assistants are not available to answer questions. Because our AI tutor is grounded in the specific Achieve course content from the instructor’s assignment, faculty have reported confidence that their students are receiving better assistance than other online options. While it’s still a bit early for us to understand the efficacy of the AI tutor, we have enough early positive indicators that we are eager to now understand the impact it has on learning. Please stay tuned!  AI tutoring is just the beginning of the opportunities in front of us. Imagine a learning environment in which teachers have a learning assistant that knows each student's preferences and levels of preparedness, paces lessons accordingly, and provides timely interventions when needed. Imagine that instructors can intrinsically engage students by framing knowledge acquisition and skill-building in ways that acknowledge the student’s curiosity, their lived experience, cultural background, and personal goals/mission–all while ensuring that students make progress against faculty course outcomes. The promise of AI is that we can support both instructors and students in making learning more deeply personal, accessible, and engaging. But how do we get there? It may be easy to surmise that with the breathtakingly fast evolution of Generative AI technology the promise of personalized learning assistants will be delivered very soon by large language models. But, human-centered products never result purely from technological advancement–instead, we must roll up our sleeves and intentionally create products that students and teachers find valuable and trustworthy.  One of the most challenging and important problems to solve with AI-enhanced personalized learning is the management and protection of student data privacy and security. In surveys Macmillan Learning has conducted this fall, 63% of students indicated that they have concerns about how data is used, stored, and generated by AI applications and companies. In our fall 2023 AI tutor tests, we have been firmly grounded in the AI safety and ethics principles and processes that we developed with the help of two advisory boards of experts. Good intentions are important, but they’re not enough.  We have been, and will continue, actively monitoring to ensure that data, privacy, and security measures are working as intended. We will continually work with experts to stay current on quickly evolving tools and best practices, and importantly, to implement auditing processes on the AI products/features we’re developing. We are resolute that AI tutors and assistants in our Achieve and iClicker platforms will align with our rigorous human-centered AI ethical principles and processes. We’ve also heard concerns that the use of AI may create disparities in education, as economically disadvantaged individuals might not have access to the same resources. There's also the risk of AI systems inheriting biases present in their training data, which can also perpetuate disparities. We believe that it's essential to approach the integration of AI in education with an awareness of these challenges and a commitment to use these tools ethically, inclusively, and equitably.  Again, good intentions are important, but not enough. We are working with AI bias experts to determine if we can proactively detect and, when possible, mitigate bias in training data. This fall, we have conducted research specifically with students and faculty at minority-serving institutions to ensure that we acknowledge the needs, questions, and concerns around AI from traditionally underrepresented populations. As if these substantial challenges are not enough, we also have new AI software infrastructure, QA testing, and monitoring projects to tackle. Every workday feels more full and fulfilling than the day before, but I’ve truly never been more energized in my career in education. I share President Biden’s observation that we have not recently had such a tangible opportunity to fundamentally transform education–and to do so in a way that benefits every learner. ... View more

With her Eras tour, Taylor Swift has been dominating the news this hot, cruel summer, including the $55 million in bonuses she gave to every member of the team that worked on the tour. But her impact on the people and the places involved with the concert experience extends way beyond that. From the resale prices, to the impact on local economies, to the role of Ticketmaster, we can learn a lot about economics from the pop icon and her tour. Economists research topics like labor, trade, global markets, healthcare, inequalities, education, etc., but the core of economics - one that Swift's Eras Tour has helped to teach us is How should economies allocate scarce resources?  Macmillan Learning author Paul Krugman (Economics from Krugman/Wells 6e) indicates that we can learn a lot from analyzing the headlines around something like the Eras Tour. Knowing that Swift's Eras Tour provides such strong teachable moments in economics, he created assignments for instructors to use this fall. The assignments are available beginning this August as an added benefit to all instructors using Macmillan Learning’s Achieve, but the team also wanted to make a few of them available for broader use. So … Don't let them slip by, like a moment in time. Is Taylor Swift Underpaid? This assignment asks students to think about economic growth as well as demand. Economic growth, the 11th principle in the first chapter of Economics from Krugman/Wells 6e, considers how the increases in an economy’s potential lead to economic growth over time. Concerts are big business. In fact, according to Bloomberg, Taylor Swift is bringing in ticket sales of more than $13 million a night for each concert, which may make the Eras tour the highest-grossing tour in music history (now that’s an American Dynasty). So how on earth could we even consider that she is underpaid? Let’s think about the question like an economist. Here are some things to consider: Modern superstar musicians don’t make the majority of their money from streaming or music sales. Rather, it comes from concerts. Unfortunately for Swift, but fortunately for us, we have the ability to listen to her songs just about any time (though there can also be a monthly subscription associated with that). While attending concerts offers a special experience, modern technology (Spotify, Apple Music, SirusXM) provides opportunities to hear Swift’s latest songs and even recordings of her live performances. Taylor Swift increased the number of shows on the Eras Tour, more than doubling the original number of shows to 131 shows. Following that announcement, ticket prices continued to soar (people seriously need to calm down!). Ticket prices on secondary markets have, in some instances, increased to more than 10 times their face value. Secondary markets exist because face values don’t reflect actual demand and supply. In the case of Taylor Swift, concerts sell out and prices continue to increase. That means demand continues to exceed expectations -- and when demand exceeds supply, prices will increase. So … should Taylor Swift have been paid more? What do you think? Start out your fall term by thinking about economic growth and demand. If you’d like to use this assignment in class, you can use the prompt above or log into Achieve for Krugman Wells 6th edition; there you’ll find a slide deck in the Resources Tab titled First Day of Class Icebreaker: Taylor Swift for even more details on the assignment.  Also, check out the assignment about the cost of attending a Taylor Swift concert & the concept of opportunity cost. ... View more

We’ve made it through another academic year. Whether you’re slowing down for a quiet summer or gearing up for summer courses, June is the perfect time to reflect on learnings from the year and imagine what the future holds for teaching and learning. We’ll be doing just that at Tech Ed 2023, an annual summit for college instructors hosted by Macmillan Learning in Austin, Texas. Each year, Tech Ed brings together educators from across the United States who teach at institutions large and small, urban and rural, and with diverse student populations. Instructors share their best practices for using technology to enhance teaching and learning. And, they engage in conversations with the Macmillan Learning team about the future of education.  Tech Ed 2023 is right around the corner and we can’t wait to meet you there. Here are our top five things that we’re looking forward to this year.  1. Hearing from Innovative Educators Educators and administrators using technology like Achieve and iClicker will share their stories and best practices. They’ll talk about engaging students in active learning, improving student outcomes, personalizing the learning experience and so much more. We’ll get to learn firsthand about the strategies and pedagogical approaches that are transforming classrooms across the country and how edtech makes it possible.  2. Joining the AI in Education Conversation Artificial intelligence is arguably revolutionizing the way we live, work, interact, and learn. Tech Ed 2023 will feature multiple sessions on AI in education. These sessions will allow instructors to explore AI’s potential to reshape how students learn, how they’re assessed, and how they collaborate.  3. Shaping the Future of Educational Technology One of the highlights of this year’s event is the unique opportunity to shape the future of educational technology during sessions with Macmillan Learning’s product, research, and marketing teams. Macmillan Learning has a rich history of co-creating technologies with instructors and students. At Tech Ed 2023 attending instructors can use their voices to inform the development of innovative teaching and learning platforms. 4. Eating Tacos  Okay, it’s not just about the tacos. Austin, Texas has phenomenal food that anyone can enjoy. We’re excited to sit down for a meal with educators for informal conversations about what they’ve been up to, the things on their minds, and how they plan to spend the summer.  5. Connecting with Educators Tech Ed 2023 isn’t just about the tech; it’s about the people we meet and the relationships we build. In the past few years, so much has been online. Connecting with others who are passionate about creating meaningful learning experiences for students is hands down our favorite part of the event. Tech Ed 2023 is an invite-only, two-day event held in the Macmillan Learning Austin, Texas office. A few spots are still available for the event on June 8th & 9th. If you are interested in attending but have not received an invitation, please contact Leslie Allen-Essex by sending an email to leslie.allen[at]macmillan[dot]com  Get a glimpse of the Tech Ed experience by watching the video below.  ... View more

Whether you’re planning to run a marathon or achieve a specific career, setting goals is a good first step towards planning for the future. Goal-setting offers direction and a sense of purpose in our lives, so it should come as no surprise that setting goals can actually help students do better in their classes. At Macmillan Learning, our Learning Science & Insights team was curious about the impact that setting and then reflecting on goals could have in student success. They have been researching its impact over the past five semesters. Spoiler alert: there is a correlation! But before we get to the data, here’s some important background about why goal-setting and reflection is something we wanted to learn more about, and how we went about that learning. The Backstory of Goal-setting & Reflection Surveys When Macmillan Learning was developing its digital learning platform, Achieve, a critical area of focus for us was self-regulated learning. We recognized that students’ ability to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning processes (a process called metacognition) touches on so many elements that are important to learning and retaining information, and built in several tools to help support it. Notably, we focused on students’ ability to reflect on what they’d like to accomplish and created an aptly named feature called Goal-setting and Reflection Survey (GRS).  The GRS within Achieve engages with each of the three phases of metacognition: planning (where students set goals and plan how to accomplish them), monitoring (where students check in on and track their progress), and evaluating (where students decide whether or not their strategies have been successful, and decide to seek help). Ideally, five different surveys will be deployed throughout the semester to allow students to set goals for themselves and reflect on their progress throughout the semester. Flexibility was built in the GRS though, so that instructors could assign and students could make use of them as needed. The GRS will typically begin with the introductory survey -- arguably the most critical since it helps to establish the initial guidance for students and helps instructors get to know the students in their class. Checkpoint surveys that ask questions such as “how often did you give yourself enough time to complete assignments” are used to give students the opportunity to re-evaluate their learning strategies, while also giving instructors the opportunity to better understand where the class is struggling. While these were also designed with flexibility, and can be used as needed, they’re most successfully used following exams and major assignments. According to Macmillan Learning Implementation Scientist Kelly Boden, this is because the questions are created for them to reflect on strategies and performance, these are most "fresh" in their mind after exams and projects. “Students commonly struggle with the self-awareness required to think about their own thinking that self-regulated learning requires. Being intentional about what they’d like to gain from a learning experience and how they’ll accomplish those goals can help students develop their metacognitive skills and succeed both in and out of class,” Boden said. Results of Goal Setting & Reflection Research To learn more about the impact of Goal-setting & Reflection Surveys, Macmillan Learning funded a series of research studies from fall 2019 through fall 2021. The studies represented 115 institutions, with 136 unique instructors, teaching 292 courses across eight different subject areas to 7,225 students. Various institution and course sizes as well as course formats were represented, including face-to-face, virtual synchronous and virtual asynchronous. The diverse student sample included 47% non-White or Asian, 22% who were first in their families to go to college, 65% who were eligible for financial aid, and 31% who had a high school GPA lower than 3.5. Overall, benefits to GRS include better academic performance, motivation, self-efficacy and engagement.  Students who completed two or more Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys performed significantly better in their courses than students who only completed one survey or didn’t complete any surveys. Assigning more than two surveys, including the introductory survey and at least one checkpoint survey, increased grades by an average of 3.4 - 8.4% compared to students who did not complete the surveys, depending on how many surveys were assigned.   Students self-reported higher self-efficacy and emotional engagement. Students who completed at least one checkpoint survey had significantly higher self-reported self-efficacy and academic engagement, particularly emotional engagement. Completing a checkpoint survey moved students closer to reporting being “very confident” in their ability to complete their coursework than those who didn’t, who were closer to “pretty confident”. Students who completed a checkpoint survey moved closer to “often” reporting being emotionally engaged in their course than those who didn’t, who were closer to "sometimes" being emotionally engaged.  Students participating in the research believed the GRS was a valuable tool. In fact, 75% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that the surveys helped them improve as a student during the course. Eighty percent agreed or strongly agreed that the surveys helped them to think about their goals and learning habits in and out of the classroom. “We all have experience with setting goals and then following up on those goals in our personal lives. We also see consistently in the educational literature that metacognitive practices impact learning. It’s been rewarding to see the literature come to life as we learn more about the impacts on learning outcomes from the GRS in practice,” said Guido Gatti, Sr. Quantitative Research Analyst. Gatti added that with just 15 minutes a month to reflect on study skills, study strategies and goals, the students can learn skills to help support their success. Given these findings, here are some best practices for instructors to incorporate the Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys into their instruction: Assign the Introductory Survey in the first few weeks of a semester Create at least one Checkpoint Survey (assigned right after an exam or project could be more impactful).  View insights and reports of student survey responses to get insights beyond just grades to help identify areas where students may be struggling.  Macmillan Learning takes our research seriously. Each study undertaken by our Learning Science & Insights Team is Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved. This particular research was reviewed by the Human resources Research Organization, an accredited third-party IRB with no affiliation to Macmillan Learning.  If you’d like more information about the study, click here to read the white paper or check out this previously recorded webinar featuring Mollie Anderson on the value of GRS. ... View more

Whether you’re a seasoned instructor or it’s your first time teaching, connecting with students can pose a significant challenge. Maybe it’s been years (or even decades) since you were a student yourself. You may feel disconnected from the current generation of students and struggle to find ways to build rapport with them. On the other hand, you could be a new instructor with the opposite problem: worrying that you need to keep some distance from your students to maintain classroom authority. When I first started teaching, I certainly struggled with the latter of those two scenarios. I learned quickly that building meaningful connections with my students not only helped my students succeed, but it also made me a better instructor. Through conversations with more experienced colleagues, I learned that connecting with my students would mean more than just focusing on the start of the semester; it would require consistent effort. Often students think of instructors as gatekeepers of their grades, not people with whom they can partner to achieve their own learning goals. However, this shift from being perceived as a gatekeeper to a partner can have a lasting impact. A handful of my own instructors understood the importance of building and maintaining connections with their students. Those are the courses–and instructors–that I remember most fondly. Those are also the experiences that I sought to replicate with my own teaching. Building rapport with students fosters engagement in course content among students and it shows them that they are valued. It also provides instructors with insights for improving their students’ success. Here are 10 steps to building meaningful connections with students not only on day one of class but also throughout the semester. Connecting With Students at the Beginning of a New Term 1. Introduce yourself (honestly). Remember that feeling of running into one of your elementary school teachers outside of school—at the grocery store, in the park, or at the movies—and being stunned to find out that they were a real person outside of the classroom? While high school and college students have no doubt that you’re a real person, that same sense of disconnection can still exist. Let your students know who you are as an instructor, but also as a person. You could also share with your students an anecdote about when you took a similar class to the one they’re now in. Showing your students that you’re a real person may make them realize that they share similar interests. Possibly, they’ll even look at your experiences as a student in their shoes as inspiration to aspire to become an instructor like you someday. 2. Break the ice. It’s safe to say that there can be a lot of nerves on that first day. There certainly were for me as a first-time instructor, and there were for my students as well. An icebreaker is a great way to ease the tension and encourage participation and there are endless possibilities for icebreaker activities. You can keep it related to course content, such as asking students to think about previous knowledge they’ve gained in past courses, or you can ask students questions that are unrelated, such as sharing a fun fact about themselves or their favorite part of their summer or winter break. Get several sample icebreaker activities to use with iClicker. 3. Make yourself available (within reason). It’s important that your students know that you are a resource both during and outside of class. Arrive to class early or stay a little late, plan to hold regular office hours, either in-person or virtually, and set clear boundaries. For example, let your students know that you check your email between certain hours during the day, and if they reach out late in the evening, you may not respond until the next morning. Connecting With Students at Mid Term 4. Create assignments and activities that let students draw on their experiences. As the term progresses, you may find that you’ll need to find new ways to capture and maintain your students’ attention. This is a good time to remind them of the applications of what they are learning in the world outside of the classroom. Ask your students to think about examples of class concepts in their daily lives. 5. Ask students about their goals for the course and follow up with them. Students appreciate regular updates on their progress and performance in class. In a large course, this can be a difficult task for an instructor, but Achieve’s Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys help make this a little easier. Students can establish their own goals and reflect on their progress throughout the term. They can share with you how they feel about their performance, which can offer a good opportunity to check in with them. 6. Use iClicker to facilitate active learning. You can use iClicker to create quizzes and polls that students can respond to during class. What are your students’ muddiest points? Find out with a poll before or during class. How confident are students in their knowledge of the day’s topic? There’s an exit poll for that. Do students truly understand the material? Create a team-based learning activity where students can work in small groups to answer questions. There’s an endless amount of ways to engage and connect with students. 7. Let your students know you’re there for them. Everyone faces unique challenges both in and out of the classroom. You can play an important role in supporting students who are facing challenges by creating a supportive learning environment, being flexible and understanding, and connecting students with resources. Be sure to emphasize the importance of asking for help and let them know when you’re available to them outside of class and how to best get in touch with you. These simple steps will show your students that you’re committed to supporting them and to their success. Connecting With Students at the End of Term 8. Show them you’ve been listening. Your students have learned a lot this term, and so have you. Put what you’ve learned about your students to use as you prepare for the final exam or assignment. At this point in the term, you should be able to recognize your students’ strengths and weaknesses, and you can adjust your teaching during the last few class periods to focus on those weaknesses. 9. Talk to them about campus resources. At the beginning of the term, you committed to making yourself available to your students; but as more and more students need your help prepping for the end of the semester, you might realize you can’t accommodate everyone. The end of term means exams, final papers, and extracurricular commitments, which can be stressful. Make your students aware of the many additional resources your school offers, such as the writing center or tutoring. 10. Consider using the last class for review and discussion. One of the last things I wanted as a student was for my instructor to introduce new material during the penultimate or last class period. My peers and I always appreciated when an instructor would use the final class as an opportunity for students to ask anything they want about class material. If you do need to use every class to finish teaching all of the material on the syllabus, then consider offering an additional review session. Connecting with your students isn’t easy, but it is rewarding–for both you and your students. And, it’s important to build and foster connections throughout the entire term, not only at the beginning. Do you have other steps that you use as an instructor to build and maintain connections with your students? We would like to learn from you! ... View more

Metacognitive skills help to make students more active participants in their own learning.  Whether offering “debriefs” after exams, activities such as “think-pair-share”, or using goal setting and reflection surveys, there are a variety of instructional methods being used to teach metacognition to aid students’ learning. Teaching these soft skills is becoming more and more common as instructors are noticing their students gain deeper understanding of their materials and doing better in class.  Students’ ability to self-monitor and reflect on their learning can have a lasting impact on their lives both in and out of the classroom. Literature reviews on metacognition have provided insight about its many benefits and the mechanisms that make it such a successful tool within education. At Macmillan Learning, we have partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to learn even more about the impact it has on student success - in particular about the benefits of using digital tools to deliver metacognitive support.  We plan to share our findings with the broader educational community. To learn more about metacognition, and the potential impact that courseware may have, I spoke to Macmillan Learning Research Scientist Kelly Boden and Research Specialist Sarah Gray. They shared interesting insights on its role in college classrooms, why it’s such a powerful tool, how features within our digital learning system Achieve can be used to harness its potential, and what instructors can do to have an oversized impact on students ability to develop their metacognitive skills. Is the use of metacognition becoming more common in classrooms?  Boden: Metacognition literature has grown exponentially in the past decade, and evidence for the powerful impact that instructional methods that support it is mounting. However, it’s unclear how much of that research is making its way into classrooms. Instructors participating in some of our research studies who are using Achieve seem aware of what metacognition is, and also a majority report supporting metacognition in some way within their classrooms. This is a positive sign that metacognition is becoming more common in college classrooms.  What is something about metacognition that you'd like instructors to know? Gray: Metacognitive skills, such as self-monitoring skills, help make students more active participants in their learning. When paired with effective feedback, strong self-monitoring skills can help students foster deep learning. It allows students to compare their actual performance to the learning goal, and determine on their own what action they need to take to close this gap in knowledge.  Boden: Metacognition is something we all do - we’re not taught explicitly to think about our thinking. Although it’s something we all do, we’re not always very good at it! Previous research has found that students are frequently inaccurate in their judgments of their own learning, often being overconfident in their accuracy on a task or topic. Luckily, there are research-backed methods to help support students’ metacognitive skills that can be incorporated into any classroom, virtual or in-person, that can have significant impacts.  When instructors think about metacognition, do you think courseware comes to mind?  Boden: Instructors that we’ve surveyed or interviewed usually don’t mention courseware when discussing metacognition. Most are aware of the concept of metacognition, and report using various techniques/methods to support it in their classrooms. Few, if any, mentioned courseware in those descriptions. I don’t think this necessarily means that instructors think that courseware can’t support or incorporate metacognition. Rather, they first think of the underlying instructional methods before attaching it to a particular courseware.  Instructors who have reported incorporating metacognition into their instruction with Achieve have described using it in a variety of ways. For example, one instructor has students complete short polls at the end of each class asking students to rate their familiarity with the content they covered, as well as their confidence in that content. Another instructor gives students “debriefs” after exams asking students to reflect on how the exam went, what they wish they knew going into an assignment, and how they could improve. Yet another instructor described a variety of activities including self-assessments, peer reviews, and group discussions. Others described activities such as “think-pair-share” and critical thinking discussions, all aimed at increasing students’ metacognition.  Within Achieve, instructors definitely identify the Goal-Setting and Reflection Surveys (GRS) as a useful tool for having students reflect on their own learning and strategy use in order to support their metacognition. Instructors have also reported using iClicker as a way for students to self-assess and complete confidence checks of their current understanding of a concept or topic. Also, the adaptive quizzing tool LearningCurve has been identified as a useful tool to support students’ metacognition by helping them to identify what they do and don’t know. This adaptive quizzing style helps students both identify and practice gaps in their understanding.   Gray: Several instructors have indicated to us that they really value having resources such as the GRS in the courseware; they note that this gives students an opportunity to reframe the way they think about their course as something they really have agency in deciding how they experience. Others have also indicated that having reporting on their student’s GRS results makes it easier for instructors to be aware of issues their students are facing, and better support them as a result. What one thing within Achieve can an instructor can do that could have an oversized impact? Gray: There’s a lot of research out there on what kinds of metacognitive interventions are most impactful for students. Research suggests that the interventions that have the biggest impact on students involve instructors delivering direct instruction on metacognitive strategies, providing opportunities for students to practice these skills, and giving feedback on their work.  Boden: Our own research has found that having students complete at least two of the Goal-Setting and Reflection surveys (intro and one checkpoint survey) can significantly increase their course grade by at least 8 percentile points. Our research has also found that completing at least one survey significantly increased students’ reported self-efficacy, engagement, and their sense of belonging. Given these findings, I would highly recommend the Goal-Setting and Reflection surveys! What kind of new features within courseware could help support metacognition? Gray: One set of resources we are piloting in some select disciplines this spring are critical thinking resources - which include not just explicit instruction on critical thinking skills, but also opportunities for students to reflect on how they use critical thinking skills in their assignments as well as their everyday lives. This is direct instruction plus opportunities for practice in action!  Boden: We are developing new ways to directly support students. This includes a website with additional resources about the strategies included in the Goal-Setting and Reflection surveys, which is offered to be directly emailed to students after they complete a survey. The website includes information on the research behind the strategies, practical ways of incorporating the strategies, as well as helpful additional resources (exam checklist, post-exam reflection, & SMART goals template). We’re also thinking of new ways to share and display survey responses with students that will further support their metacognition and learning.    ... View more

Research has found that students who use their metacognitive skills have higher rates of success -- not only do they earn better grades, but they also gain a better ability to transfer knowledge and achieve higher graduation rates. It’s something that we’ve long been interested in at Macmillan Learning, and are excited to learn even more about -- especially as it relates to under-represented student populations. To that end, we partnered with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to research and test equity-centered enhancements for digital courseware, such as our learning platform, Achieve, in the introductory courses of psychology and sociology. We believe that if we increase Black, Latino/a/x and Indigenous students’ sense of belonging and metacognitive skills in key gateway courses, then we can increase the likelihood of students successfully completing these courses along with other courses to come. But why is that? To explain better, it’s important to have a better understanding of what metacognition is and how it can impact student success. About Metacognition As was mentioned in the first part of this blog series, Metacognition is thinking about ways to improve your own thinking and learning processes. It’s valuable within an education setting because it helps students analyze new problems, identify which resources and strategies are useful to solve those problems, and also to assess and adjust their learning strategies as necessary. In other words, the metacognition required within self-regulated learning helps students to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. Picture this scenario: A student is taking a low-stakes exam in their psychology class. They begin by reviewing all of the end-of-chapter questions to identify which questions they can answer straight away, and which they need to think more on and save for later. Throughout this process, they’re monitoring how many questions they have left and how much time they have before they need to turn their work in. Once they finish, they then reflect on questions they may have gotten wrong and some concepts they could have understood better. They decide to set aside time to look back on the chapter and join the class’ study group. Within this example, the student would have used all three metacognitive skills: planning, monitoring and evaluating. Planning: When students are setting goals for tasks, identifying the task’s critical features, and planning strategies to solve the task Monitoring: When students are tracking where they are in their learning and monitoring progress towards their goals Evaluating: When students are reviewing whether they met their goals and reviewing the strategies they used to accomplish them Using these skills will help make them a better student by enabling them to gain a deeper understanding of the class’ content and develop more productive ways to study. How Metacognition impacts student success At its heart, metacognition is a student’s ability to adapt problem-solving behaviors to different academic tasks. Primarily, it impacts the skills and motivations that control how a student learns, and it's critical for successful subject mastery and achievement. It’s also something that’s commonly referred to as self-regulated learning. By better understanding how they best learn, students will not only retain more, but they will also instill a greater understanding of how that knowledge can be applied to other situations. Some students may need extra time for writing assignments, or know that they need to put their phone away to avoid distractions when studying. It’s having this kind knowledge about how they learn that helps them to create an environment that enables them to succeed. It can also help them to make better use of their own time, allowing them to make even more progress. Picture this scenario: A student approaches their instructor after class to understand why they didn’t do as well as they thought they would on an exam. They read the material and highlighted the points they thought were most important. The instructor asks a question about how to apply the knowledge to a different scenario, and the student is unable to. While the student became familiar with the topic, they didn’t understand it deeply or learn how to apply what they learned. With strengthened metacognition skills, the student would be better able to reflect on their own learning and develop the kind of higher-order thinking that’s required to succeed in class and throughout their college experience. With time, it will be second-nature to the student as they continue to think about improving their learning. How Instructors Can Support Metacognition One of the most important things an instructor can do is to create connections between how students can apply what they learn to their goals -- both within their class and the real world. Psychology and sociology are often required within a student’s general education and are critical to learning about human nature, but not necessarily tied to their major. While students may not have prior knowledge of or interest in the course material itself, the instructor’s role and metacognitive activities become even more critical to the students overall success. Another way is for instructors to ask prompting questions. Research has shown that asking these questions can lead to students’ increased learning and performance. An example of this is requiring explanations of students’ thought process or asking them to defend a position within their homework assignment. This type of task would help the student to think about their thinking and would prompt the kind self-explanation required to demonstrate understanding of the concept. A different set of interventions aimed at increasing metacognition are self-reflection exercises. These goal setting and reflection surveys can serve several purposes including offering insight into students, establishing a baseline students can measure future progress against. This can be done via surveys or exam wrappers, and would include likert scale and open-ended questions to help students reflect on their study plans and goals. Instructors can also ask students to go through their graded exam to reflect on the answer they got wrong and think about how they could improve on future exams. Our own research has demonstrated that courses which assigned two or more surveys saw a minimum 15% increase in assignment completion, which resulted in at least an 8% point increase in student grades in the course compared to those that assigned only one or no surveys. And finally, instructors can help students to build self efficacy by normalizing adversity. Tools such as Learning Curve’s adaptive quizzing with targeted feedback can help students succeed. The adaptive algorithm selects questions for each student based on their own performance, challenging them with more difficult questions as their performance improves. It’s completely normal to struggle in class, and tools like this can help students to identify gaps in their understanding, get targeted feedback and hints, and allow them to solve the problem again correctly. Both the goal setting and reflection surveys as well as Learning Curve’s adaptive quizzing are available within Achieve, Macmillan Learning’s digital learning system. We’ll explore the connection between courseware and metacognition in the next in the series. In the meantime, learn more about Macmillan Learning’s partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. ... View more

As classes start to fill up in the virtual and in-person classrooms this fall, many questions remain about how the semester will be impacted by the pandemic. When the pandemic began, plans for instruction and assignments needed to be changed quickly; many instructors weighed the costs and benefits of the right workload for students during the time of change and crisis. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much data available to influence their decisions about what the right workload looked like. At Macmillan Learning, we’ve been conducting research over the past year to better learn about how students are interacting with their course materials, and what benefits doing so may bring. We sought to discover more details about how class assignments within our learning platform, Achieve, have been used, both synchronously and asynchronously, and the impact that completing them had on student success.  We questioned everything. We wondered whether or not the quantity of assignments, the type of assignments, and engagement with assignments impacted grades. And after analyzing results from more than 11,000 students using Achieve in 225 beta courses from fall of 2019 to spring of 2021 to better understand the impact of assignments, we have some answers about how assignments in Achieve impact exam scores.  Our big picture takeaway -- student success, as it relates to their exam scores, is less about the number of assignments that instructors give out, and more about engagement with the assignments. The number of assignments given to students had no impact on their exam scores. Rather, the amount students engaged with the assignments that were given was the factor that made an impact. This data is consistent across all disciplines we studied, including chemistry, math, psychology, economics, biology, and English.  students are projected to score 9% higher on their exams when they have better grades --almost a full letter gradeStudents with higher scores on Achieve assignments tend to perform better on their course exams. Further, students who completed fewer assignments on Achieve than was typical for their course, also performed lower on their exams. Students engaging with 50%-75% of the Achieve assignments could expect to score 4% points lower on their exams. Students engaging with less than 50% of the typical course load in Achieve could expect to score 8% lower on their exams, again almost a whole letter grade.  These two effects work in conjunction with each other. This means students performed better when they did the work they were assigned, and better still when they did well on that work.  In sum, we have very good evidence of an overall relationship between Achieve usage, better assignment grades and higher exam scores. We also learned that more isn’t necessarily better and also that all assignments are not created equal. We plan to share more information about which assignments work best once we’re done with our analysis. Stay tuned for more about that as well as our next blog post -- recommendations on what instructors can do to support student success, as it relates to the assignments they give.   ... View more

Another academic year has ended -- one that was marked by changes to teaching and learning. Instructors relied more and more on edtech for their virtual classrooms, learned new best practices about student engagement and were more cognizant than ever about the numerous factors that together facilitate student success. Instructors like Solina Lindahl used digital learning systems to accompany their instruction.  Solina Lindahl is always on the cutting edge with trying new technology in her classroom, and was among the first instructors to check out Macmillan Learning’s new platform, Achieve. The Achieve platform includes an interactive e-Book as well as expansive learning materials with pre-class, in-class and post-class activities. We asked Solina Lindahl, Senior Lecturer for Economics at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, about digital learning and her switch to Achieve for Essentials for OpenStax Principles of Economics.  Why did you first decide to use online tools in your class? Honestly, my large class sizes and lack of TA support mean that online products have made sense; students get way more real-time feedback than they would otherwise. People are hesitant to embrace change, but what would you say are the benefits of moving to Achieve vs your experience in Sapling? The up-front costs of switching ANY of our class materials is no joke- I get it, especially if you teach large sections like I do. When things go wrong in a new platform it can be overwhelming plus we’ve all been through an exhausting year. But I notice that the user interface in Achieve is so clean, and I have had such good experiences with the tech support that I feel like it’s easier to switch to Achieve than most products. And let’s keep in mind the benefits: great graphing questions, algorithmic problems, well-produced and inclusive video tutorials with forced reasoning questions that students need to answer. Pair those with adaptive quizzes and you have a platform that supports many types of learners and class formats. Also, Achieve’s user interface is cleaner and contains more resources and instructor customization options. One benefit to digital learning is the insights you get about student performance. What kind of feedback do you get and how do you use it? I appreciate the dashboard view of topics where students are missing the most questions, and the question discrimination helps me create better exams. When I have time, I like to look at the student responses to the ‘Bridge’ reasoning questions grouped by the wrong answer to see where the misunderstandings are coming from. What advice would you offer on using technology in the classroom? One piece of advice: Frame (and remind often) WHY you're using technology, especially if you're using it intensively.  Also, make sure to be clear about your policies for late work, tech failures etc. up front. Make sure to walk them through the site in class; I think they know less about tech than we assume. How have students responded to Achieve? They tell me they really appreciate the adaptive quizzes because it helps keep them on top of the material and gives them a sense of how well they are understanding it. This interview is part of a series focusing on how digital learning is being used in college classrooms and, in particular, what the transition to Achieve has been like. About Achieve: Macmillan Learning built its new digital learning platform Achieve to help students of all abilities and backgrounds succeed. It offers the content, tools and insights about student success to do just that. Achieve was designed with active learning in mind, and can be used in traditional, online, hybrid, blended, or a fully “flipped” classroom, with options for both synchronous and asynchronous learning to support engagement. It was co-designed with more than 7,000 students and over 100 leading educators and learning scientists both at our company and on our independent review boards. Learn more about Achieve. ... View more

We’re now more than midway through the Spring semester, and many instructors are still teaching remotely. Many of them are using digital learning systems to accompany their instruction, enabling students to complete assignments, track their grades, connect with instructors and peers, take quizzes or other use other self-assessment tools, and stay engaged. The launch of Macmillan Learning’s new digital learning platform Achieve, couldn’t have come at a better time to support these learners.  Over the past few semesters, many instructors have already made the switch from Sapling, one of the more popular systems for STEM instructors and students. The Achieve platform includes an interactive e-Book as well as expansive learning materials with pre-class, in-class and post-class activities. We asked Karen Butland, an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Grossmont College, about digital learning and her switch to Achieve for Foundations of College Chemistry. What have been some challenges with online learning since classes went virtual?  How have you addressed them? One of the challenges since classes went virtual is trying to assess student learning with exams and quizzes. Some instructors choose to address that problem with proctoring services, or with having students sign an honor code. I did not like either of those options.  With fabulous features in Achieve, I was able to “pool” questions so that the computer picks different questions for each student within a certain category. For numerical questions that are the same, Achieve has algorithms that give every student a different number. Achieve has a feature allowing timed tests which has great flexibility. My students have a two-day window to complete an exam or quiz whenever it is convenient for them, but once they open the quiz, the timer counts 45 minutes for them to complete it. People are hesitant to embrace change, but what would you say are the benefits of moving to Achieve vs your experience in Sapling? I am VERY hesitant to embrace change, but I have found Achieve to be well worth the effort. I had already made the shift to using Sapling in HTML5, so migrating to Achieve wasn’t that much different. How do Achieve and Sapling differ? Achieve has many more features than Sapling. I have yet to discover all of them, but there was one thing I was delighted to find. When a disability student needed extra time on an exam or quiz, this was quite difficult to do in Sapling. In Achieve, it is so easy--just select the student and type in how much time they get, and Achieve does the rest. One benefit to digital learning is the insights you get about student performance. What kind of feedback do you get and how do you use it? I love being able to see exactly which questions each student missed. It is extremely helpful to have a student on Zoom and share my screen while we look directly at their homework and compare their answers to the correct answer. I can also easily “reset” a question to give a student the opportunity to try again with a different number, once they feel like they understand the solution. I love the flexibility of being able to edit their score as I see fit. This interview is part of a series focusing on how digital learning is being used in college classrooms and, in particular, what the transition to Achieve has been like. About Achieve: Macmillan Learning built its new digital learning platform Achieve to help students of all abilities and backgrounds succeed. It offers the content, tools and insights about student success to do just that. Achieve was designed with active learning in mind, and can be used in traditional, online, hybrid, blended, or a fully “flipped” classroom, with options for both synchronous and asynchronous learning to support engagement. It was co-designed with more than 7,000 students and over 100 leading educators and learning scientists both at our company and on our independent review boards. Learn more about Achieve. ... View more

Choosing the right digital learning system is an important consideration for instructors as they plan out their courses -- especially when many classes are taking place remotely. More than just a place to read an e-textbook or complete homework, these systems are interactive tools used by students to complete assignments, track grades, connect with instructors, take quizzes or other self-assessment tools, and more.  Susan Hendrickson, Teaching Professor in Chemistry at the University of Colorado With the launch of Macmillan Learning’s new digital learning platform Achieve, instructors have been making the switch from Sapling, one of the more popular systems for STEM instructors and students. We spoke to Susan Hendrickson, Teaching Professor in Chemistry at the University of Colorado, about her experiences teaching students in her virtual classroom. We also asked her about her experience transitioning from Sapling to Macmillan Learning’s new digital learning system Achieve last fall for her Gen Chem 2 class and this spring for her Gen Chem 1 class. What have been some challenges with online learning since classes went virtual?  How have you addressed them? Making meaningful connections- between instructors and students, as well as between students- has been very challenging. I think students are more engaged, responsive and motivated when they connect with their instructor and classmates. I try to share a little bit about myself or something funny from the news at the start of class to lighten the mood. This works with some students but not with others. Another challenge is keeping students organized and able to complete their assignments on-time. They seem to be struggling with their calendars more than usual. Every day and every class must feel the same from their bedroom so they just seem to lose track of what  day it is.  I have had to step up my own calendaring and To-Do list skills too! I feel like I’ve done more coaching about making schedules and sticking to them since going virtual. Why did you first decide to use online tools in your class? Class size!  Although I would love to SEE their work and be able to give them personalized feedback.  With sections of 100 – 400 and whole courses with enrollments of 600 – 1,000, that’s just not possible.  Online homework allows them to practice, get immediate feedback and work according to their own schedules.  Otherwise we couldn’t require homework. People are hesitant to embrace change, but what would you say are the benefits of moving to Achieve vs your experience in Sapling? There are a few things that I love about Achieve. I love that the grades are synced between Achieve and Canvas. This has saved me about an hour every Tuesday and Saturday morning alone. I also love that they can use a link in Canvas to access the Achieve resources – assignments as well as reading.  This might have been possible in Sapling but we didn’t have it set up. Honestly Achieve isn’t that much different than Sapling – same assignments, same questions (mostly).  It wasn’t that much of a change content-wise so the transition has been easy. How have students responded to Achieve? I switched with a group of students last spring (Gen Chem 1) in Sapling to this fall (Gen Chem 2) in Achieve and they transitioned with no issues.  I don’t think they saw  it as a dramatic change since the assignments themselves looked the same.  I know they like how easy it is to access the assignments and readings with two clicks from Canvas. This interview is part of a series focusing on how digital learning is being used in college classrooms and, in particular, what the transition to Achieve has been like. About Achieve: Macmillan Learning built its new digital learning platform Achieve to help students of all abilities and backgrounds succeed. It offers the content, tools and insights about student success to do just that. Achieve was designed with active learning in mind, and can be used in traditional, online, hybrid, blended, or a fully “flipped” classroom, with options for both synchronous and asynchronous learning to support engagement. It was co-designed with more than 7,000 students and over 100 leading educators and learning scientists both at our company and on our independent review boards. Learn more about Achieve. ... View more

Choosing the right digital learning system is an important consideration for instructors as they plan out their courses -- especially when many classes are taking place remotely. More than just a place to read an e-textbook or complete homework, these systems are interactive tools used by students to complete assignments, track grades, connect with instructors, take quizzes or other self-assessment tools, and more. Each system has different strengths and offers different pedagogical approaches.  With the launch of Macmillan Learning’s new digital learning platform Achieve, instructors have been making the switch from Sapling, one of the more popular systems for STEM instructors and students. The Achieve platform includes an interactive e-Book as well as expansive learning materials with pre-class, in-class and post-class activities.  We asked Dr. Tony Hascall, a Chemistry Professor at Northern Arizona University, about digital learning and his switch to Achieve for Interactive General Chemistry. People are hesitant to embrace change, but what would you say are the benefits of moving to Achieve vs your experience in Sapling? The main benefit is that Achieve is better integrated with the textbook and gives you the ability to assign readings from the textbook as well as links to videos, simulations etc. The library of questions is exactly the same, including LearningCurve (adaptive quizzing), but Achieve allows readings etc. to be assigned for credit. Achieve also has a more modern, less cluttered appearance and makes it clear for students to see what assignments have upcoming due dates. You mentioned that you give students pre-class, in-class and post-class work -- how does technology like LMS, Achieve and iClicker fit into that? I have found that students don’t tend to do assignments unless they count for some points in the class. Achieve allows readings from the textbook to be assigned for credit. I also post asynchronous video lectures on YouTube, which can also be assigned on Achieve, as well as links to other resources such as PhEt simulations. These can be assigned pre-class to allow students to come to class prepared for active learning activities. And of course homework can be assigned as post-class work.  The LMS has mainly been useful during removed learning for posting materials that would have been handed out on paper in class. I have also used it for exams One benefit to digital learning is the insights you get about student performance. What kind of feedback do you get and how do you use it? I mainly use this to identify students who are struggling or not doing work early in the semester to try to change their habits before it is too late. Why did you first decide to use online tools in your class? Since my classes have been quite large, I did not want to assign paper homework each week due to the large amount of time needed to grade. But it is important that students practice the material outside of class. Online tools allow students to be given assignments that are graded automatically and provide students with instant feedback and hints. Also I believe that students tend not to read traditional paper textbooks anymore, so having an electronic textbook that is integrated with the online system, as is the case with Achieve is very effective. What have been some challenges with online learning since classes went virtual?  How have you addressed them? I would say the two major challenges have been trying to do active learning in a remote format, and giving exams. I have tried putting students in Zoom breakout rooms, but with large classes, it is really not the same as having students working together in the classroom and being able to walk around the room and look at students’ work and help them As for exams, I have tried as much as possible to write “Google-proof” questions to try to ensure that students are being tested on what they have learned, not just what they can look up. This interview is part of a series focusing on how digital learning is being used in college classrooms and, in particular, what the transition to Achieve has been like. About Achieve: Macmillan Learning built it’s new digital learning platform Achieve to help students of all abilities and backgrounds succeed. It offers the content, tools and insights about student success to do just that. Achieve was designed with active learning in mind, and can be used in traditional, online, hybrid, blended, or a fully “flipped” classroom, with options for both synchronous and asynchronous learning to support engagement. It was co-designed with more than 7,000 students and over 100 leading educators and learning scientists both at our company and on our independent review boards. Learn more about Achieve. ... View more