“One of my passions is to help students succeed,” said Dr. Kevin Revell, author of Introductory Chemistry. “It’s part of what drives me.” During his sixteen-year tenure as a chemistry professor at Murray State University, Kevin has helped many students succeed, and this isn’t limited to his own students. As the author of a popular, introductory level textbook, his passion to help students stretches much further than his own classroom.  Writing a textbook is challenging, as educators work to channel their experience and knowledge into a tool to teach others. Macmillan Learning’s authors are accomplished experts in their fields; often distinguished academics at some of the most reputable colleges, universities, and institutions around the globe; and they also have remarkable careers outside the classroom. They use all of these experiences as practical examples when teaching or writing their books.  Macmillan Learning’s new Author Spotlight series gives students an opportunity to learn more about the educators authoring their textbooks. What have their careers looked like? Did they always know that they wanted to work in higher education? When did they turn from teaching to writing? This month’s spotlight is Kevin Revell, an author whose successes and struggles as a student and teacher have informed the way he teaches and writes today.    Dr. Kevin Revell, Murray State UniversityKevin became interested in chemistry at an early age. He told me he remembers sitting in a tree at eight-years-old trying to figure out what plastic was made of. “It’s not made of wood. It’s not metal. So, what is it?” Kevin said. His developing interest in science continued to grow, and he described everything as “clicking” during his high school chemistry class.  “Most students didn’t like the class,” Kevin said, “but I was fascinated by the material and couldn’t stop asking questions.” Less than two years later, Kevin started his undergraduate career at the University of New Orleans as a chemistry major. Despite his strong interest and enthusiasm for the sciences, he struggled during his first year,  describing this as a formative part of his education that greatly influenced the way he teaches today. It’s an age-old piece of advice that students should visit professors during their office hours. Nevertheless, many students are often hesitant to take them up on their offer. I shared with Kevin that my younger sister recently completed her first year of college as a declared biochemistry major and that she struggled during the spring semester in her Chemistry II course. “Tell her to come to Murray State,” Kevin joked.  Kevin wants his students to take advantage of his and other professors’ willingness to offer one-on-one help. “I know I may look sort of big and scary,” he said with his military-style haircut and two folded U.S. military flags in his office, “but I really want my students to know that they are welcome. I want to see them succeed.”  Kevin told me about a frequent visitor to his office hours. “This young woman took both Chemistry I and Chemistry II with me last year, and she really struggled,” he said. “We spent hours working through problems together on the whiteboard, and she got better and better.” Kevin impressed the importance of working through problems on the whiteboard. “I can better understand students’ thought-processes and see where they get hung up,” he said. “We go through a bunch of whiteboard markers.”  The student Kevin described didn’t take organic chemistry with him, yet she still continued to visit him during office hours for help. “She’s on her way to vet school now,” Kevin said. “It’s gratifying to see students not necessarily know where to begin with a problem and then emerging at the end of a semester or academic year with a really developed cognitive skill set. They know how to tackle big problems and persevere until they make it through.” Kevin described many of his students as being far ahead of where he was at their age. “At nineteen I had no idea what I was doing. These students are going to accomplish things that I never could,” he said. When asked what career Kevin saw himself pursuing as a student, he told me his goal was to obtain his PhD. “I wanted to do high-level research and be a big shot in the field of chemistry,” he said. But, after entering graduate school, he became frustrated with his research and felt he needed to step away for a while to reassess. “I moved to Florida and taught at a high school for one and a half years. That’s where I learned how much I love teaching,” Kevin said.  Kevin and his wife had two small children at the time, and he realized that going back to school was going to be the best option to support his growing family. “So, I returned to school and finished my master’s degree,” he said. “Afterwards, I worked for a couple of years in the pharmaceutical industry. I learned so much chemistry during that time. It’s just such a different world from academia. It’s no longer theoretical, and the stakes are really high.”  Fortunately, Kevin also found a way to continue doing what he loved most during this transitional time – teaching. While working for Eli Lilly, Kevin taught one night a week at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis. “I’d get off work an hour before class, make a quick stop at White Castle for dinner, and then rush over to the community college with a handful of markers and a vague plan!” Kevin said. “I really came to appreciate what a community college does, and the challenges and opportunities that professors have,” he said.  Like many others, 9/11 made Kevin reflect about where he wanted to be and what he wanted to do with his life. “It was always going to be teaching,” Kevin said. An opportunity popped up in Florida, so Kevin and his family made the move back to the Sunshine State. “This little college was just beginning to launch into the physical sciences and build the program from the ground up,” he said. Kevin has fond memories of this time. “Everything was new and there wasn’t much of a budget, so the other teachers and I had to be a little experimental.” Kevin described all the “goofy” stuff they were doing – from dropping bowling balls to measure the acceleration of gravity to using old record players from the school’s library to measure rotation. “We even built our own primitive fume hoods to conduct microscale organic experiments,” Kevin laughed.  Although Kevin was thriving as a teacher, he wanted to complete his PhD. “The experience with my master’s degree left a bad taste in my mouth, and I was very reluctant to go back,” Kevin said. It was a mentor, the provost at the college where he was teaching, who made all the difference. “It’s really valuable to have someone in your life who will tell you the things you don’t want to hear,” he said. “He told me the hard truth – that if I wanted to succeed in academia, going back for the PhD was essential.”  It turned out that the PhD experience was much better than his time as a master’s student. “I ended up working with Professor Ed Turos at the University of South Florida. “He was terrific to work with. He understood that I was an adult, balancing the responsibilities of being a teacher and dad, and that I needed to figure out how to make it all fit,” he said. “He helped me make it fit.” Kevin finished his PhD in 2006 and has been teaching at Murray State University ever since.  While there are many chemistry professors, only a few are writing introductory textbooks for thousands of college students. So, how did Kevin become a textbook author? When I asked him, he told me it was sort of a funny process. “I ended up working with Sapling Learning, doing virtual product demos with colleagues around the country. I was able to build a lot of great relationships and learn about the teaching challenges that my colleagues were facing,” Kevin said. It was through this experience that Kevin met the publisher, Roberts & Company (which eventually merged with Macmillan Learning), and started the Introductory Chemistry project.  “It’s amazing how it all came together,” Kevin said. “Our department chair assigned me the non-majors chemistry course. It was a night class, and I was originally pretty grouchy about it because it was during my son’s basketball season, and I hated missing games. But I fell in love with the class, and have been closely involved with the non-majors course ever since.” Originally, the non-majors class used a textbook that had some gaps in it, so Kevin ended up writing an entire chapter himself to fill those holes. When he was approached by a publisher interested in producing a digital-first textbook, Kevin was already prepared with a writing sample.  After signing his project, Kevin noted, “I had this great team with the energy and know-how to make my vision of helping students succeed a reality,” he said. “I wanted to create digital tools that emulate the ways I work through problems with my students in the classroom and office. I feel we achieved that.”  Another thing that was important for Kevin to consider with his textbook was practicality. “I’ve had the benefit of working in the pharmaceutical industry, so I’ve seen how industrial chemistry really works,” he said. “I want students to have the context they’ll need to succeed in their jobs.” Introductory Chemistry exposes students to a wide variety of different potential career paths for students of chemistry. “I’ve provided chapter introductions that tie in stories from different disciplines – forensic, conservation, archeological, geological, manufacturing – all sorts of different things. There are so many opportunities out there that students aren’t even aware of.”    Kevin Revell teaches introductory, general, and organic chemistry at Murray State University, and also serves as the assistant dean for the MSU Jones College of Science, Engineering, and Technology. A passionate educator, his teaching experience includes high school, community college, small private, state comprehensive, and state flagship institutions. His work encompasses curriculum, technology-enhanced pedagogy, assessment, and active-learning design. He has hosted multiple science education workshops, and is the senior editor for flippedchemistry.com, an online community for college-level instructors implementing active-learning pedagogies. A synthetic chemist by training, his research involves the synthesis and evaluation of functional organic materials. With his wife, Jennifer, Kevin has three children – James, Julianne and Joshua – and two grandchildren. ... View more

At the time of this writing, legislation has passed in seventeen US states that prohibits or restricts instruction on a widespread array of topics and pedagogical approaches. Nine additional states have legislation proposed or pending. The prohibitions range from bans on the teaching of critical race theory, restrictions on the adoption of pedagogical practices like social emotional learning and culturally responsive pedagogy, and the inclusion of classroom topics related to LGBTQIA+ communities, gender studies, and gender identity.   These laws and regulations are not just rhetoric. In addition to being the basis for queries about the content of our titles, they have created an environment in high schools and at colleges and universities in which course materials are evaluated not solely on their educational merit, but through a political lens. These laws have resulted in a reduction in transparency into how K-12 titles are evaluated and approved by state boards and agencies and a lack of guidance on how community reviews influence the decision-making process. This is even true for titles developed for high school Advanced Placement courses that had been previously taught in classrooms by school districts without complaint and which strictly align to national standards developed by the College Board.  Despite these most recent infusions of politics into the evaluation of course materials, we remain committed to a publishing process that does not compromise the educational value of what we produce. The recent legislation affects the way we conduct business and makes it harder for us to support our educational mission – we oppose these and other legislative acts that create a political barrier between us and the classrooms we serve.  Macmillan Learning: Diverse Views United To Support An Educational Mission Our company’s mission is to improve lives through learning. At Macmillan Learning and BFW Publishers, we participate in students’ lives through our publications and digital tools. Our employees and the authors we work with take pride in the learning materials we produce and our contributions to better student outcomes for communities, schools, and universities around the world. To value these things means we also value the right of each employee and author at Macmillan Learning to have a political view of their own and to bring their lived experience to bear in the work we do in partnership every day; it is that very diversity of thought that adds to the quality of our materials and to the betterment of our company. The breadth  of our authors and our publications, our commitment to inclusivity, and the effectiveness of our digital  products provide educators with choices and builds equity for every learner in the classroom. You need to look no further than our economics list to see the diversity of viewpoints that we support. From ardent defenders of free market capitalism to proponents of the value of government regulation and intervention in the economy, our authors present a diversity of views and we are proud that several of them have put those views into practice in public service to U.S. presidents from both sides of the aisle.  Our commitment to free speech and diversity of perspectives in the classroom provides a foundation for our stance from which we will not waver: We believe classrooms must be places where ideas are fostered, engaged with, and critiqued – not banned. We believe it is essential for every learner to have a secure classroom environment where an individual’s identity is respected, the inherent human dignity of every person is acknowledged, and their lived experience is valued.  We believe that educators and students should see themselves in their learning materials, and our content is written and our digital programs are developed in ways that support that belief. We promote the free exchange of ideas, oppose censorship, and denounce efforts that place politics ahead of pedagogy.  Our Values Are The Lens Through Which We Make Decisions Our values help us navigate this difficult political climate. We are first and foremost an education company. We agree with PEN America and the American Association of Colleges and Universities that the principle of academic freedom undergirds all academic environments. And further, that  “any legislative effort to circumscribe freedom of inquiry and expression in order to hew to political directives and agendas denies students essential opportunities for intellectual growth and development.” We will meet this evolving political environment head-on by continuing to support free speech and academic freedom, and we will defend our publishing process and our right to publish. We will not compromise the integrity of our content, our values, or the relationships with our authors and each other that bind us through our common mission. We hold to these promises because these principles are encapsulated in our mission, and being a privately held, family owned company, we  measure our success by each student we serve more than the next dollar we earn. We know that what we do makes a difference, and we work everyday to meet our responsibility to unlock the potential of each learner. There are more voices still to be heard, more students still to be reached; as we listen to and learn from them and each other, we are energized by our mission and our role as a positive force in education.  ... View more

“It’s a lot of work to write a textbook,” said Jamie Pope, co-author of Scientific American Nutrition for a Changing World, “Much more work than popular press.” As the author of both popular science books and an award-winning textbook, Jamie would know. Writing a textbook isn’t easy. Not only do authors need to have a wealth of experience and expertise in their respective fields, but their writing also needs to pass a rigorous editing and review process.  Macmillan Learning recognizes that the success of our textbooks and courseware is in large part due to our outstanding authors, many of whom are distinguished professors and academics at some of the most reputable colleges, universities, and institutions around the world. Our authors have remarkable careers that extend far beyond higher education; they are excellent teachers; and they are impeccable writers and storytellers.  Students don’t often think about the authors of the textbooks with which they spend so much of their time. What if there were an opportunity to get to know these extraordinary authors, to learn about their lives, their backgrounds, and how they got to where they are today? Now there is with our Author Spotlight Series. Each month, we will feature a different Macmillan Learning author, and we’re beginning this month with Jamie Pope.    Jamie Pope, M.S., R.D.N., L.D.N., F.A.N.D., Vanderbilt UniversityThere was no grand plan for Jamie. She didn’t know growing up that she was going to study nutrition; work in a hospital as a registered dietitian; contribute to some of the most popular weight-loss and dieting books of the 80s and 90s; serve as a consultant and spokesperson for several large food companies; develop one of the most successful open, online nutrition courses; and write an award-winning textbook – to name but a few of her many career accolades and achievements.  So, how did Jamie first become interested in nutrition? When I asked her this question, she told me it’s a story she tells fairly often. Jamie went to an all girls high school that did not have a traditional cafeteria. There were vending machines with limited options but no robust “hot lunch” for the students. As part of an assignment for her English class, Jamie needed to conduct a survey, and that was when she first thought more about what everybody was eating for lunch. “The two most commonly consumed items were Cheetos and Milky Way candy bars,” Jamie told me. “At the time I wasn’t thinking too much about vitamins and minerals, but when I considered the implications of this simple survey it made me more aware of why food choice and balance might really matter.”  A couple of years later, when Jamie was flipping through the pages of her university course catalog, she remembered thinking she needed to choose a major. “I saw a course on vitamins and minerals and thought it sounded interesting,” she said. To Jamie it ended up being more than just interesting. She loved it, and decided to major in nutrition.  “From there I had sort of the traditional path of a registered dietitian, working in a hospital setting with patients,” Jamie said. She lived in Boston at the time, specializing in the area of heart disease and obesity. One day in 1986, when she was leaving the hospital to catch a flight back to her hometown of Nashville, the medical director stopped her and told her to reach out to Dr. Martin Katahn, a health psychologist at Vanderbilt University writing popular science diet books. Jamie described this as her entry into publishing.  Dr. Katahn had a lot of success. He was featured in People Magazine and appeared in many national talk shows, but Jamie noticed something missing from his team of researchers. “I couldn’t believe he didn’t have a dietitian on his team,” she said. “He was conducting all of this diet related work, but he didn’t have anybody with a nutrition background.” Soon after Jamie returned to Boston, Dr. Katahn asked her to come work with him at Vanderbilt, where she’s been located ever since.  Initially, Jamie was doing weight-loss research and consulted on some of Dr. Katahn’s books. One of these books was The T-Factor Diet, for which Jamie compiled an extensive appendix including thousands of foods with their grams of fats, calories, sodium, and other nutritional information. The book sold millions of copies and quickly became a bestseller. “One day,” Jamie said, “on a call with our publisher, they told me they wanted the appendix to be its own publication because so many people were copying it and carrying it around with them.” The little spin-off fat gram “counter” that she co-authored sold over seven million copies and spent more than three years on The New York Times bestseller list.  Jamie’s success with popular press opened the door to many opportunities. When I asked her about the most interesting roles she’s had, she told me about her time as a spokesperson or consultant for a few different food companies. “One of the fun things about my career were the media opportunities,” Jamie said. “I did a media tour with Chick-fil-A releasing their Gallup poll on fast food nutrition in the 90s. I’ve gone on book tours. I appeared on the Today Show a couple of times.” Chick-fil-A provided her with media training, where she learned media strategy and etiquette. “That was a lot of fun!” “Getting to do those types of things was scary, but there was also always a lot of adrenaline pumping,” Jamie said as she reminisced about the different people she met during this part of her career. “I remember sitting in a green room and being interviewed by Katie Couric.” Jamie also did some consulting for Super Bakery, which was owned by Franco Harris. “Have you ever heard of him?” she asked me with a smile. Jamie admitted she’s not much of a football person, so she hadn’t recognized that he was a multiple-time Super Bowl winner with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  “One day I had to pick him up at the airport, and I thought his name was Frank O’Harris, not Franco Harris,” Jamie said. “I had a sign with his misspelled name on it and was looking for someone who I thought probably looked Irish,” she laughed. “All of a sudden he comes up and tells me ‘I think you might be looking for me.’” Franco thought it was funny, and Jamie’s brother, who is a football fan, couldn’t believe his sister had done that. Thereafter, when Franco would call, he would keep the joke alive and tell Jamie “Hey, this is Frank.”  In 2000, after gaining experience in research, publishing, media, and consulting, Jamie started teaching her introductory nutrition course at Vanderbilt University. “Out of all of the things I’ve done in my career, teaching is what I love most,” she said. Jamie doesn’t expect students to leave her course as nutrition experts. Instead, she described her course much like a music or art appreciation course. “When you take an art class,” she said, “you never walk into a museum the same way again. You look at things differently, you have new questions, and you have a greater appreciation for artists of all types.” She wants her students to appreciate the evolving science  of nutrition. “I want them to be better consumers and be equipped to better evaluate and question what they read or hear about food and nutrition in the media, from friends, and on food products.” Writing a textbook gave Jamie an opportunity to reach even more students. Macmillan Learning approached Jamie in 2012 to ask her about the possibility of writing a textbook. She remembered wondering why the team was asking her, and they provided three reasons. “The first was that I had a publishing history. The second was that I had good reviews on Rate My Professors, which I thought was funny because at the time I had never heard of that before,” she said. Jamie then looked immediately afterward at the website. “And third, they told me that they heard good things about my introductory nutrition course at Vanderbilt.”  The same day Jamie agreed to write the textbook, she was boarding a plane back to Nashville from New York and received an email from her provost and dean at Vanderbilt. They asked her to teach one of Vanderbilt’s inaugural MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Although feeling overwhelmed, she agreed to teach this MOOC, which aligned with her introductory nutrition course and involved creating course content, filming over 80 videos, and managing the course. “At first I thought maybe 300-400 people might enroll, but then it just kept growing!” she said. “Once we got over 50,000, I remember one of my colleagues telling me that we just filled Nissan Stadium.” The course was offered three times ultimately enrolling more than 175,000 participants from all over the world.  Jamie credits her career opportunities for providing her the experiences necessary to write a textbook. “My co-author, Steven Nizielski, and I make a good team,” she said. “Our textbook follows a story-based approach with science weaved into relevant stories.” Jamie said that what sets their book, Scientific American Nutrition for a Changing World, apart from others on the market is the fact that it’s written by two authors who bring different perspectives, allowing different types of readers to connect to the material. “As a registered dietitian nutritionist I bring my nutrition background and practical experience and Steven brings his nutrition and biochemistry expertise, so he provides much of our scientific backbone for the book,” she said.  While Jamie admitted that balanced, sound nutrition is part of how she lives her life, she loves to eat, experience new foods, and eschews restrictive “dieting”. “I made an incredible chocolate cake yesterday,” she said. “I love to bake, which doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with nutrition, but it's another form of creative expression for me.” She also enjoys long walks as her main form of exercise, and she listens to audiobooks on those walks; her favorite genre is historical fiction. She lives with her husband, her younger of two daughters, their big dog, Stanley, and their two cats. Jamie Pope, M.S., R.D.N., L.D.N., F.A.N.D. currently serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor in Nutritional Sciences at Vanderbilt University, is a registered dietitian nutritionist, Fellow of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and academic author. Jamie came to Vanderbilt in 1986 and has worked in the areas of obesity research, health promotion, and heart disease prevention. Teaching since 2000, her popular classes have reached over 6,000 undergraduate students from a wide range of majors to learn about nutrition science and its application to their personal and professional lives. Beyond the classroom, Jamie adapted portions of her nutrition courses to produce a Massive Open Online Course or “MOOC” which earned her an Innovation in Teaching award from the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. Jamie is the co-author of the award winning textbook Nutrition for a Changing World. Jamie is a recent recipient of the 2021 Outstanding Dietetics Educator Award from the Tennessee Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and has served on the executive leadership committee for Nutrition Educators of Health Professionals Dietetic Practice Group. Jamie has authored or contributed to numerous scientific and popular press publications. She has held several corporate positions including at Chick Fil-A and Smart Balance, serving as nutrition consultant and media representative. ... View more

Mia Bay, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History, University of PennsylvaniaThere’s little doubt that Americans rely heavily on travel for both work and pleasure. But there’s more to getting from here to there than meets the eye. The recent Black Lives Matter protests highlighted the ways in which racial profiling and discriminatory policing still exist today on America’s roads and highways. This is not new, however, as the transportation inequities that began as far back as the 19th and 20th centuries continue to persist for many Black drivers.  Macmillan Learning employees recently welcomed Freedom on My Mind author and Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania Mia Bay to discuss this intertwined history of transportation, segregation, and resistance, which is the topic of her new book, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance. To help us better understand the ways in which Black passengers and drivers still haven’t fully escaped from the repercussions of Jim Crow laws, Professor Bay encouraged us to travel back in time to look at the broader history of transportation in America, including a closer look at traveling by train, bus, plane, and automobile.    The Railroad “One of the reasons that transportation became so important in the Black civil rights struggle is that the 19th and indeed the 20th century were the golden age of the American railroad,” Professor Bay reminded us. Almost everyone who traveled long distances in the United States did so by train. While this included many African American passengers, train transportation was not very accommodating to these travelers.  “People also often forget that Plessy vs. Ferguson, the landmark Supreme Court case that established the doctrine ‘separate but equal’ in 1896, was about accommodation in railroad cars,” said Professor Bay. Blacks were relegated to second-class cars known as ‘Jim Crow cars.’ “The Supreme Court’s decision made it very difficult to fight a system,” said Professor Bay, “in which separate was supposed to mean equal, but separate is never equal, as we all know from education.”  African American travelers rode in train cars that were visibly inferior to those of their white counterparts. Not only were Jim Crow cars often the smoking or baggage cars, they were often the oldest cars of the train. “They would typically be made of wood,” said Professor Bay, “whereas the other cars of the train were metal. This led to the development of a phenomenon known as the ‘Jim Crow train crash,’ in which virtually all casualties were those riding in the Jim Crow cars.” It was not  until the 1950s that wooden cars were taken out of rotation.    Buses, Planes, Automobiles Early municipal bus lines were known as jitneys, large cars similar to streetcars, that were both white and Black-owned. African Americans needed to develop their own jitney lines because the white-owned jitneys didn’t always pick up Black people. “Even after jitneys were relegated out of existence and replaced by more buses, they continued to not pick up Black passengers,” said Professor Bay. “Though there were reasons for this beyond discrimination. There weren’t necessarily services for Blacks along the road – places where they could go to the bathroom, where they could eat, or where they could spend the night.”  The advent of the automobile gave African Americans more autonomy, but it did not solve many of these problems. “We often think of cars as being private spaces,” said Professor Bay, “and so Blacks sought to escape Jim Crow laws by owning and driving their own cars.” However, according to Professor Bay, cars are highly regulated. “To drive a car and be able to travel anywhere, you need to be able to use service stations, rest stops and hotels. Further, you’re also subject to police scrutiny.”  While service stations weren’t common in the early days of the automobile, when they finally did become more common they weren’t welcoming to Black drivers. “Gas stations were developed largely to appeal to women drivers, and so they were intensely middle-class, white, domestic spaces,” said Professor Bay. Many service stations refused to sell gas to Black drivers, which Professor Bay said she found puzzling during her research for Traveling Black.  Whether traveling by bus or by car, African Americans needed to strategize their routes. “There came about these publications such as The Green Book, which were basically travel guides for African Americans, informing them where they would be able to stop,” said Professor Bay. “A culture developed in which Blacks were sharing a lot of information with each other and planning their trips very carefully, which is sort of a striking contrast to the emerging notion of the ‘open road,’ which other Americans were thinking about.”  Once planes came along, African Americans were hopeful that they would be an escape from Jim Crow laws. Nevertheless, airports were segregated with  separate waiting rooms and bathrooms, and airport restaurants often didn’t serve Black travelers. “Blacks were usually the first to be bumped from a flight if a white passenger needed their seat. This even happened to Ella Fitzergerald when she was supposed to give a concert in Hawaii,” said Professor Bay.  “While the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s eventually brought an end to segregation in airports, on railways, and buses, they did not completely change our society,” said Professor Bay. While fewer people are traveling by bus or train today, Blacks continue to encounter all forms of discrimination on the ‘open road.’ “They pay higher prices for both insurance and cars, which makes them less likely to own vehicles,” said Professor Bay. “And, something we perhaps don’t think about as often is mobility during disasters. Blacks are disproportionately less able to escape from natural disasters.” As an example, Professor Bay drew our attention to Hurricane Katrina.  To learn more about the intertwined history of transportation and segregation, check out Professor Bay’s book, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance.    Mia Bay (Ph.D., Yale University) is the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her publications include To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells; The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830–1925; Freedom on My Mind, Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance, and the edited volume Ida B. Wells, The Light of Truth: The Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader. She is a recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship and the National Humanities Center Fellowship. An Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, Bay is a member of the executive board of the Society of American Historians and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of African American History and the African American Intellectual History Society’s Black Perspectives Blog. Currently, she is at work on a book examining the social history of segregated transportation and a study of African American views on Thomas Jefferson.  ... View more

As our working life has evolved over the past two years, I have been thinking about the experiences and jobs I have had throughout my publishing career.   Although I did not necessarily love every job, nor was I the best fit for every one, what I know to be true is that each step built on the last one and each one helped me grow as a person and as a professional. A common thread for me as I built my career has been the ever present role of my mentors. Mentoring is widely considered a critical component to career success, and today, women are focusing much more on networking and mentorship. This often provides help for us as we navigate our lives as working women, and we are better for it.    Throughout much of its early history, the publishing industry had a reputation for being a “gentleman’s profession;” one in which women like the first female newspaper publisher Elizabeth Timothy could only be found behind the scenes. At the turn of the century, women who wanted to work in publishing found themselves in secretarial roles because the editorial roles they coveted were dominated by men. As the 20th Century progressed, the industry started to see editorial positions and other roles open up to women. In fact, a 2019 study on the US publishing industry revealed that 74% of employees are women.  At Macmillan Learning, women are a majority of our employees. Much of the reason for the change can be attributed to support and mentorship of women. Elizabeth Timothy relied on her partnership with Benjamin Franklin to publish the South Carolina Gazette, and many women who had ambitions to work in publishing relied on their connections within the industry to get their first roles. Mentors can be invaluable to helping support and nurture women for a career in publishing, no matter where they are in their career journey. Early in my career I never thought I was ready for the next position. In fact, I remember having to be talked into applying for some new roles. Thankfully, my managers and mentors believed in me. My doubts made me one of the 75% of women who manage their imposter syndrome, second guessing whether I was ready for a new role, and to take the next step in my career. And like 72% of these talented women, I relied on a mentor to help me manage and move past those feelings. And as it turns out, they were right. We all have a part to play in helping women grow and nurture their careers both inside and outside the publishing industry. While informal mentorships are a critical part of growth, they’re just one piece of the mentoring puzzle. More and more, companies are recognizing the significance of having a diverse workplace, and an important part of that is gender equality.  But I didn't just rely on mentors early in my career -- they have helped me progress throughout my career. My mentors have been male and female. But unlike what one would think a typical mentorship looks like, many of these were informal relationships that formed organically. I worked on nurturing those connections by asking questions and seeking advice. As my responsibilities grew, I also grew my network of people I could rely on for advice, for empathy and sometimes some tough talk. Today, I’m paying it forward by being a mentor to other women inside and outside Macmillan Learning. I am part of a Women’s Leadership Network, and I sit on the Board of Directors of the not- for- profit organization Reach Out and Read of Greater NY.   I’m proud that I’m part of the company’s mentorship program, and the Executive Sponsor of Proud@ML, one of the company’s Employee Resource Groups.  This Women’s History Month, I wanted to take a moment to recognize those who have mentored me and countless other women to develop their publishing career. For me, being a mentor has brought such joy and pride helping those early in their careers grow and stretch themselves when they are not sure they can.   For those who might be reticent, I encourage you to think about those that inspire you, or spark your curiosity and start having those organic conversations that can oftentimes grow into lifelong mentorships.   ... View more

When instructors and students are used to in-person learning, the switch to online, remote learning can be a difficult one. It’s not unusual to feel rather disconnected, and it can be a challenge to form meaningful instructor/student and peer relationships. Macmillan Learning’s new digital platform Achieve can help facilitate this sense of community that many might feel is lacking in the virtual classroom.  The Achieve platform includes an interactive e-Book as well as extensive learning materials with pre-class, in-class and post-class activities. In addition to these materials, Professor of Psychology Dr. Michael Poulakis finds the Goal-setting and Reflection surveys to be the biggest advantage of Achieve. Through the use of this key function, Dr. Poulakis feels he can better understand the needs of his students and track their progress throughout his courses. Macmillan Learning asked Dr. Poulakis what other features of the new digital learning platform he found helpful.    What have been some challenges with teaching–especially with online learning–since the pandemic started? How have you addressed them? I think one of the main challenges is knowing how I should reach out to and communicate with my students to make sure that they understand the material. I teach psychology at the University of Indianapolis, so teaching online I need to ask myself: Do they understand the material? And, do they feel safe and comfortable enough to reach out to me if they don’t? Can they raise their hand virtually, so to speak, and say “Dr. P. I need your help with this”? Lastly, can I provide them with the tech experience that they need to be successful students? For me, Achieve has achieved that. Achieve has done that for my students.  How do Achieve and LaunchPad differ? Achieve is LaunchPad on steroids. I think that Achieve is what Windows 10 is to Windows 7. One of the advantages is the ability to do online surveys. This way I can gather some confidence about my students regarding how they feel about the class and their performance. How are they doing? How are they performing? These are the questions I ask myself, and with Achieve, I get data. I get to see what challenges my students face, including individual data from each student based on their responses, and that gives me more information about each student.  Another thing I like about Achieve is the plurality of assignments for each chapter. That is one of the major advantages, and the reason I believe that is because I can use current events, and I can also make sure that I capture different learning styles. That has been very helpful to me.  One part of Achieve that instructors and students have really responded to are the Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys. Are you using those? If so, how has that student information changed your class–for you and your students? I’ve used Goal-setting and Reflection surveys since I started using Achieve. One of the main advantages is that I get additional information about each one of my students. I’m a qualitative researcher, so the ability for me to know what is going on for each student–and I taught a class of 45 students this past semester, dealing with COVID, dealing with financial issues, dealing with relationships, dealing with medical issues, working full time (many of them work full time). The surveys gave me information about how I can best reach them, especially during off-hours when I’m not teaching class to ask them “What can I do for you?” or “How can I help you?” and I think that helped me realize that each one of them had their own particular set of challenges. I think it also reinforced that they can reach out to me, and it gave me a good idea of how they’re doing in class. They respond well to that because you can assign the different surveys throughout the semester, and that gives you data–baseline to an output–about how they’ve done, how they have progressed, and also how successful they feel about reaching their goals.  Why did you first decide to use online tools in your class?  All of my students used digital in high school, and that’s a shift that I have seen. Because of COVID, they’re already predisposed to that model. So for me, in terms of teaching, I knew that I needed to have a robust technology platform like Achieve to reach them. There were no technology issues, and that is such a blessing. I did not have to play tech support; I did not have to refer them to the tech side. The worst problem that happened was for me to teach them how to disable pop-ups and ad-blockers–for Achieve to work–and that was the worst scenario the whole semester.    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. Interested in hearing more from Dr. Poulakis? Register today for the webinar "Connecting with Students to Improve Learning" where he'll share more about his experience using Goal-Setting and Reflection Surveys in Achieve. 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

The best designs are often the ones we don’t think twice about because they blend so seamlessly into our environment and benefit everyone who uses them. While it may go unnoticed, creating purposeful, accessible design often takes input from a variety of stakeholders; without consideration for and input from everyone, rather than from one specific user, accessible design can fail to hit the mark. Creating a seamless environment that supports all learners – with the input of a variety of stakeholders – is what Macmillan Learning strives to do as we develop our products and services.  To learn more about accessible design, Macmillan Learning recently sat down with Senior Development Editor, Sherry Mooney, and Associate Marketing Data Analyst, Vera Sticker, who also serves as the Cultural Awareness and Education Committee Lead for Macmillan Learning’s AVID (Awareness of Visible and Invisible Disabilities) Employee Resource Group. In our conversation, Sherry and Vera explained what the Curb-Cut Effect is, and they offered several great examples of architectural and product designs that benefit everyone - not only those with disabilities.  “We’ve all been there,” Vera said, “trying to push open a door designed to be pulled because of a misleading handle.”  “Or trying to get a stroller, wheelchair, or suitcase over a curb,” Sherry added.  Design problems like these might not just be irritating, they might even prevent people from being able to do simple things like accessing a building, enjoying a movie, or making dinner.  “People with disabilities face these obstacles regularly, sometimes on a daily (or even hourly!) basis,” said Sherry. “Over the years, as disability awareness has grown, many commonplace things have been modified or redesigned to enhance accessibility.”  “And this has led to a very cool discovery: time and again, the more accessible the design, the better it tends to be for everyone, with and without disabilities,” said Vera.  Such consistent results have warranted a name for this phenomenon: the Curb-Cut Effect. The discovery of the Curb Cut Effect led to a new design philosophy known as Universal Design, for which the University of Washington offers a lengthy but usefully precise definition.  Sherry and Vera provided three great examples of the Curb-Cut Effect in architectural design and products that people encounter or use on a daily basis. Accessibility Wins  The Curb-Cut EffectCurb-Cuts “Obviously, we have to start here,” said Vera. According to Sherry and Vera, curb cuts started appearing on American sidewalks in the 1940s and 1950s, when a few communities decided to invest in more accessible environments for disabled veterans. Thereafter, with the pressure from disability rights activists, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 led to curbs being cut in every corner of the country.  “It was a big win for people in wheelchairs, but they were far from the only ones to benefit,” said Vera. “Curb cuts made life easier for anyone navigating with a stroller, shopping cart, rolling luggage, and just about any other thing on wheels.”  OXO Good Grips “Another great example is the ‘Good Grips’ line of kitchen tools by OXO,” said Vera. “Although Good Grips products can be found in many kitchens (and almost every home goods store), the first product was created by Sam Farber with just one person in mind: his wife, Betsy, whose arthritis made it difficult to use a standard peeler.”  Farber founded OXO to create a line of tools that were easier for everyone to use, regardless of ability. The company applied universal design principles from the beginning, rather than trying to retrofit existing products.  Automatic Sliding Doors “The first modern sliding doors weren’t created for people with physical disabilities,” explained Sherry, “but for a different group of people who still had trouble in their environment: the residents of Corpus Christi, TX, which is one of the windiest cities in the US.” In 1954, Lew Hewitt and Dee Horton recognized this community’s struggle to open and close swinging doors, so they invented the automatic sliding door.  “They’re great for people carrying groceries, using wheelchairs, walking with guide animals, and those juggling multiple small children or strollers,” said Sherry. “In short, automatic sliding doors are a simple solution that makes buildings more accessible for everyone.”  Helping Everyone When it’s successful, we often don’t even notice universal design in action. Unfortunately, good intentions don’t guarantee success in universal design when it isn’t applied appropriately.  It’s not enough to only consider certain groups of people and to think of solutions based only on that group. In other words, adding accommodation for whomever might be deemed as the “default” user is not the same as removing barriers and increasing accessibility for all.  Universal Design is not limited to architectural design and products, but can be extended to the ways in which society as a whole is organized. Some companies offer their employees the flexibility to shift their working hours or to work longer on some days and shorter on others.  This would make jobs more accessible to those with chronic concerns like pain or fatigue because those individuals would be able to work when they feel best and rest when they need to. Many jobs offer this option as an accommodation when it’s specifically requested, but offering this sort of flexibility can make things better for everyone in terms of work/life balance. A good example of this benefiting everyone would be how it would allow those with different sleep schedules to be more productive during the times of day when they are feeling most energized and motivated.  “Obviously, this sort of approach wouldn’t work everywhere – for instance, in a retail or restaurant position* – much the same way that we don’t all have automatic sliding doors in our houses,” said Sherry.  There are requirements for particular places and roles that necessitate particular design choices. Whenever it is possible, however, universal design can point to better solutions for all users – and a better society for everyone.  *Sherry and Vera note that the most limiting positions are often held by those with fewer options because of structural economic, racial, or educational discrimination. Therefore, even as we acknowledge the challenges of universal design in these more constraining situations, we also embrace the challenge of trying to find ways to continue to apply universal design and to improve access and quality of life unilaterally.   ... View more

Student engagement remains a hot topic during the ongoing pandemic. How are instructors, who normally offer their classes in-person, managing to keep students engaged in their fully or partially virtual classrooms? For William Curington, instructor of English at Rio Hondo College, it's important to make sure his students feel they are part of a community - even if it’s an online, digital community.  William Curington, Instructor of English at Rio Hondo College Successful online teaching makes use of the best digital learning platforms, and in his classroom, William has used Macmillan Learning’s Achieve platform with his teaching of A Writer’s Reference. The Achieve platform includes an interactive e-Book as well as extensive learning materials with pre-class, in-class and post-class activities. Macmillan Learning asked William Curington about his experience switching to this new digital platform.  People are hesitant to embrace change, but what would you say are the benefits of moving to Achieve vs your experience with LaunchPad?  I think change is difficult for anyone. While I enjoyed using LaunchPad, I have found Achieve to be more “customizable” for my individual class needs. The pandemic kind of forced instructors everywhere to become more tech savvy and I was able to use some of that transitional time to find new and creative ways to use the platform.  How do Achieve and LaunchPad differ?  I feel like Achieve gives more options to me as an instructor when customizing it for the needs of my own course. LaunchPad certainly worked, but it felt more pre-packaged. With Achieve, I have more control of how I’m utilizing it and what features I’m using to connect with my class. Most recently, I have worked with integrating Achieve into our LMS, Canvas, which I’ve found very effective.  We know that student engagement–especially now–is a large issue and so important to student success. How do products like Achieve fit into that? As a community college instructor, I have students of various levels in all my classes, and one of the things I’ve found very helpful are the adaptive quizzes (LearningCurves) Achieve offers. It is nice to know that students can work at their own pace and the adaptive quizzes will identify areas students need work on so they can adjust accordingly. This kind of individualized, self-paced, non-threatening practice of concepts is exactly what many college students need.  How have students responded to Achieve overall?  Students have responded well to Achieve and have taken the time to tell me it has really helped them develop their writing skills. Class time is limited, and I think Achieve is extremely helpful because it allows an instructor to make sure that students are getting reinforcement and feedback on concepts outside of traditional class meetings. I can dedicate more class time to things like discussion and peer review and still know that my students are receiving the self-paced support they need for concepts that are foundational for their writing skills.    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

The cover of Macmillan Learning’s first edition of Preparation for Calculus features a picture of Olympic skateboarder and X Games champion, Lizzie Armanto. For many students, Lizzie’s image provides a point of entry into the course; math can be cool, and everyone should feel welcome to enroll.  Macmillan Learning asked Lizzie what it meant to her to be featured on the cover of a textbook, to reflect on her own schooldays, and if she had any words of encouragement for students pursuing something new or challenging.    Photograph by Anthony Acosta. You were the first female featured on the cover of Transworld SKATEboarding. You’ve been featured on the cover of Thrasher Magazine, and you’re also a playable character in several skateboarding video games. Did you ever imagine you’d be featured on the front cover of a textbook? Not at all. I think people are more excited about the cover of Preparation for Calculus than they were about Transworld.  Lots of students on social media are saying that seeing you on the cover is the first time they've felt represented by a textbook, and it's inspiring them to consider the course. What would you say to them? Studying/learning new things can be challenging and maybe even daunting. Applying math to skateboarding is a fun way to make learning and practicing new 'math things' relatable. Hopefully it makes the work seem less like work and more fun. Can you describe for those of us less knowledgeable about skateboarding the maneuver or trick you’re performing on the front cover of this book? The trick is called a “frontside invert” aka “frontside handplant”. You basically go up the wall forward and as you approach the lip, or “coping” of the ramp or bowl, you reach out with your leading hand to grab the lip while at the same time grabbing the toe side edge of your board with your trailing hand. Your body will instinctively turn towards the direction you turn your head and the forward momentum combined with looking over your forward facing shoulder as you leave the bowl (hands still holding the lip and board respectively) will naturally bring you back around towards the ramp or bowl. You have to pull your weight in sometimes in order to make sure you do not land on the deck of the ramp. Once you’ve come all the way around and have spotted your re-entry point, you bend your knees and begin to slowly stand as you’re entering back into the ramp or bowl. This sounds complicated but once you see it, the trick is actually pretty simple.  What’s a fond memory that you have of your school days, high school or college, outside of skateboarding?  Still to this day, when I walk through the history building in Santa Monica High School, I can remember feeling a cesspool of emotions in ninth grade. Everything was new to me, the classes, campus, teachers, and kids. I knew I wanted to pursue skateboarding but at the time it felt like some far off dream. There were a few teachers that made my high school years pretty enjoyable. Their passion for what they did or the subject they taught had an impact on me. Teachers don't get enough credit and the bad ones really give the rest a bad rap.  You competed for Finland in the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games. What have you learned while training for the games that may help students as they face their own challenges? Aside from rehabbing a serious injury nine months prior to the Olympics, I didn’t really change anything as far as training or preparing for the Olympics. In all actuality, the Olympics was one of the easier contests for us as professional skaters are concerned. Due to the quota system, no country could send more than three qualified skaters and with the majority of top pros being from three countries (USA, Brazil, Japan) there were quite a few top skaters who could have medaled but were not able to compete in Tokyo because they fell outside of the country quota. X Games and Vans Park Series (pro tour) are much more competitive than the Olympics were. You’ve been described as a trailblazer in the sport of skateboarding. Less than twenty years ago, women were earning less than 5% in winnings compared to men's event winners in the X Games. When you won skateboard-park gold in your first X Games in 2013, the prize amounts were equal. What advice would you give to other women and girls pursuing their dreams in male-dominated fields or spaces? Don’t be afraid to go for it or fail. Everyone has to start somewhere. Be patient with yourself and just keep at it, eventually you'll get to where you want to be if you keep at it or maybe even end up somewhere better. You’re passionate about promoting the sport of skateboarding in lesser developed countries, and you’ve helped run skateboarding workshops, clinics, and demos. Why is it important to share skills with others?  Skateboarding is such an amazing lifestyle and teacher of things on and off the skateboard. Skateboarding teaches resilience like when you fall, you get back up. Little things like this go a long way when you start applying it to other areas of life. You can follow Lizzie on her Instagram and see her on the cover of Preparation for Calculus here. ... View more

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day, many students all around the world will be celebrating love with their romantic partners by sending cards, giving gifts, and sharing candlelit meals. While doing this, they will be demonstrating their interpersonal communication skills which help them to competently communicate, interact, and work with individuals and groups or, in this case, a romantic partner. According to Dr. Kelly Morrison, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and co-author of Reflect and Relate, “love is defined and created by how we interpersonally communicate.” Much of what’s learned about interpersonal communication is derived from social and mass media, family and peers, personal experiences, and cultural norms and practices. That includes the communication that’s used throughout romantic relationships. But that’s not where the learning needs to end. From combating stereotypes about love as depicted in the movies, to understanding the various stages of falling in love, students can learn a lot about the intersection of romantic relationships and interpersonal communication in a college classroom. From Hallmark and Disney movies to popular love advice books, misinformation about relationships is pervasive. For example, students often learn from these media that passionate love should be the ultimate relationship goal. In interpersonal communication courses, students learn that there is more than one way to demonstrate love, with passionate love being just one of them. “Our job as educators is to give our students trustworthy knowledge and help them apply it to their close relationship challenges,” said Dr. Steven McCornack, Professor at University of Alabama at Birmingham and co-author of Reflect and Relate. There’s also an opportunity for students to learn what love is -- and what it isn’t. According to Professor McCornack, it’s not uncommon to conflate physical intimacy with love, but the two do not always correlate. “Across the globe and throughout history, people have been physically involved with those with whom they’re not intimate; and intimate with those with whom they’re not physically involved.” Professor Morrison explains that love is “created and sustained, moment by moment, day in and day out, through our communication, what we share, and how we support one another.” Further, men aren't from Mars, women aren't from Venus, and there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all way to approach love. The different love attitudes expressed in a relationship lend themselves to vastly different communication styles. “If you possess a more practical, as opposed to a more romantic attitude about love, you likely will also see variations in what and how people communicate about love,” said Professor Morrison. In addition to tackling misconceptions about romantic relationships, interpersonal communication classes also discuss topics critical to building and maintaining successful relationships: from how to approach conflict to the importance of emotions. This kind of knowledge helps students to make more informed choices regarding how they communicate and respond to another person's communication. “We control our own romantic relationship destinies through the choices we make regarding how we communicate. Our choices determine our communication; and our communication creates our romantic relationship outcomes,” said Professor McCornack. Learn more about the intersection of romantic love and interpersonal communication from a webinar when the two Macmillan Learning authors and interpersonal communication professors spoke about “love attitudes and relationship maintenance.” The webinar is free for instructors and will provide a complimentary assignment for instructors to use on Valentine’s Day or when otherwise discussing romantic relationships. Access it for free here. ... View more

While the pandemic forced many instructors to adapt their teaching style for a fully or partially virtual classroom, the use of digital learning platforms will remain a key component of both remote and in-person learning moving forward. Dr. Darcie Rives-East used Achieve during the pandemic when her teaching moved completely online, and she’ll continue to use the platform for her in-person teaching.  The Achieve platform includes an interactive e-Book as well as extensive learning materials with pre-class, in-class and post-class activities. Dr. Darcie Rives-East, a Professor of English and First-Year Seminar Director at Augustana University, shared with us how she got the most out of this new platform during her time teaching remotely and which features she’ll continue using once she resumes in-person teaching. She’s used The Writer’s Reference with the Achieve platform.  What have been some challenges with teaching–especially with online learning–since the pandemic started? How have you addressed them? A major challenge for me as a composition instructor was having students peer edit classmates’ papers online. I used Achieve’s peer editing function to arrange peer editing partners, as well as the function’s ability to guide students through the questions I wanted them to focus on while they were giving advice to their partners. I found the peer editing function to be a great way to have students interact and work with one another despite not being physically present in the classroom.  People are hesitant to embrace change, but what would you say are the benefits of moving to Achieve vs your experience with LaunchPad? Achieve has so many more capabilities than LaunchPad (such as peer editing and instructor editing of papers, paper assignment templates, etc.), as well as more exercises than LaunchPad. I also thought it was easier to integrate Achieve with an LMS (such as Canvas), and, as a writing program director, I was able to set up and monitor accounts for program instructors.  Why did you first decide to use online tools in your class? During the pandemic, prior to vaccines, I had to be completely online due to prior health considerations. Therefore, I wanted to use all tools available to me in order to replicate and even improve how I teach composition in the physical classroom. Achieve provided me with the resources I needed to teach writing online without sacrificing quality. When I return to the physical classroom, I plan to still use the resources of Achieve to allow a “flipped classroom,” where students can learn and practice certain grammar lessons online, as well as participate in the writing sequence, so that we have more time to discuss writing in the classroom.    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

After a mostly in-person fall semester, many instructors are now preparing to start the spring semester differently than they had anticipated. While the pandemic has presented many challenges to teaching and learning, instructors have found that the right digital learning system can make all the difference in maintaining engagement and supporting student success in the virtual classroom. At the start of 2020, Macmillan Learning launched its new digital learning platform Achieve, and many instructors have already made the switch to it from Launchpad. 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. Michael Stroud, Professor of Psychology at Merrimack College, about digital learning and his switch to Achieve for Exploring Psychology.  What have been some challenges with teaching–especially with online learning–since the pandemic started Psychology Prof. Michael Stroud? How have you addressed them? I’d say the biggest challenge is with student morale and engagement. Students do not seem to be as motivated to learn as before. The way I’ve addressed this is by focusing more on hands-on tasks for more engaging learning in the classroom. Students do not seem to be interested in hearing lectures, but rather creating projects instead.  People are hesitant to embrace change, but what would you say are the benefits of moving to Achieve vs your experience with LaunchPad? The user interface with Achieve is much more fluid. Finding activities and materials and assigning them is much easier as well. Achieve is essentially Launchpad with all the kinks worked out; it’s a cleaned up version, which makes content delivery much more seamless.  We know that student engagement–especially now–is a large issue and so important to student success. How do products like Achieve fit into that? It keeps students on task no matter what is going on in the classroom. This is especially the case for LearningCurve since it requires students to pay attention rather than mindlessly click.  How have students responded to Achieve overall?  Students love Achieve. They enjoy reading more for a purpose and with interactive activities rather than just reading plain text.    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

The way teachers instruct and students learn has changed significantly over the past few years. No factor has had a bigger impact than the pandemic, which emphasized just how important student engagement is and underscored the role that educational technology can play in supporting student success. As these changes were happening, Macmillan Learning launched its new digital learning platform, Achieve.  While some instructors were just starting to embrace new technologies, others -- like Central Florida Psychology Professor Amira Sims -- have been relying on it for many years. She was among the first to transition from the online learning platform LaunchPad to Achieve to better support active learning in her classes. We spoke to her about what teaching was like during the pandemic and about her transition to our new platform. The transition to a virtual classroom was inevitable with the pandemic. What were some of the ways that edtech supported it in your class? My college installed a camera and microphone in my office desk top so that we could teach synchronous online classes or hold office hours remotely. We also had several professional development seminars centered on using technology for education purposes. Using Achieve really helped me to feel confident that although there was no lecture, students were exposed to the information and had an opportunity to play with concepts. How long have you been using online tools in your class, and what helped you decide to embrace the new tech? I have been using online tools in my classroom since 2004. When I first started teaching (as an adjunct) I taught blended classes. Over the years I have only become more and more reliant on web-enhancement in all classes I teach. While campus life has returned to something slightly more normal, how has the pandemic changed the classroom and/or the way you teach? I no longer take roll and I waive the late penalty for all of my classes. I began making videos on a more consistent basis to help students stay on course. How do Achieve and LaunchPad differ? I use Launchpad for my Human Development course and Achieve for my General Psychology course. The main differences I notice is that students in the Development course all praise Learning Curve, whereas students seem to comment more on the activities with Achieve that help them to practice concepts and think critically. In general, Achieve seems to have more activities and a few more tools on the dashboard for the instructor. Most of my students have responded favorably to Achieve.   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

Three quarters of Dr. Edna Ross’ students started the semester vaccinated. How does she know this? iClicker. Over the years, instructors have come up with new and interesting ways to use iClicker in their classes. Far from being just Dr. Edna Ross a polling app, iClicker can be used for attendance, asynchronous polls, and low-stakes quizzing -- or for questions you want to surface in your course, like learning whether or not students were vaccinated and why. And it all can be done anonymously. At the start of the Fall semester, the Psychology Professor used iClickers as an 'icebreaker' on the first day of class, asking, among others questions, for students to anonymously self- identify as fully vaccinated, planning to get vaccinated/has at least one dose, or not vaccinated against COVID-19. The 75% vaccination rate in her classes was an accurate reflection of what was taking place on college campuses nationally, with the majority of college students and staff being vaccinated against the virus. The anonymous poll offered insights into her students' thinking and demonstrated an important lesson for the psychology students about consequences.  Students’ reasons for getting the vaccination included reducing their risk of severe COVID-19 and passing the virus as well as wanting to go about their day-to-day activities with less risk. Further, many didn’t want to quarantine for two weeks if they had been exposed to someone they later found out was infected -- something that was required on campus. Students reasons for not getting the vaccination varied from distrust of the government due to the Tuskegee Syphilis study run by the US Public Health Department (read more about that here), mistrust of “Big Pharma”, that the vaccination was too rushed, or the belief that too many FDA approved drugs were recalled because of negative side effects. For these students, the cons had outweighed the pros of being vaccinated. Ultimately, the anonymous iClicker poll about vaccinations wound up encouraging more students to get vaccinated. There were two reasons for this. First, they were able to see that being vaccinated was normalized and something that the majority of students had agreed to. Second, because there were consequences of their choice that impacted their learning experience. “Quarantine meant they missed work in all their classes. My syllabus outlines the allowances I make for missed assignments for all students, but I do not give quarantined students any special considerations,” Dr. Ross noted. While unvaccinated students had to quarantine for two weeks if exposed to anyone with COVID whether or not they had symptoms, fully vaccinated students did not have to quarantine if they weren't experiencing symptoms. Contact tracing forced almost all of the unvaccinated students out of class for quarantine at one time or another. While vaccinated students rarely had to quarantine, some unvaccinated students had to quarantine for two consecutive periods of time.  This meant students missed class work in all their courses for a month!  A daunting situation for any student. This is only one of the many interesting ways that iClicker is being used during the pandemic to support student engagement and success. One instructor is also using it for contact tracing in her large enrollment class; to learn more about that, click here. To learn more about the benefits of iClicker, click here. ... View more

As I begin to see colleagues face-to-face in our offices as they slowly return to normal, I am reminded of a pre-pandemic session with an author who claimed the fidelity of learning and communicating face-to-face was billions of times higher than online. Oh, how that assertion has been both felt, and tested, in the last 18 months as educators scrambled to deal with the abrupt digitalization to connect with learners, and we quickly worked to support their efforts.  The last 18 months has been a period of new stresses, new social change, and profoundly more time to ourselves. With all that time, it is clear that people have not only been reevaluating where they work, but also “why” they work. Throughout my career I have had several different answers to the question of “why” I would enjoy working with one employer and team versus another. What I learned ultimately was -- the mission matters.  Early in my career I worked in finance, but was quickly drawn into a reengineering effort that involved software technology meant to streamline and transform a number of internal processes. I was suddenly excited by how much more effective and efficient we were, and saw firsthand how software could radically change things. With my new passion for technology, my “why” shifted to helping others solve problems with technology and my passion evolved into supporting learning. Over time, I really gained a passion for the outcomes of improving teaching and learning, the “why” was less about me and positions or money and more about doing some good. When I joined Macmillan Learning I was struck by both a sense of fun, and a gentle but deep seriousness about our roles in improving the lives of others, not only in our content and products, but also in how we connect with society and care for each other internally. The company’s mission was exactly what I was passionate about, and it shows in everything we do and how we work. At Macmillan Learning, we methodically learn. There’s a humility we take on every day with our focus of “test and learn”, looking at data from the market, from impact research, from customer feedback..  We sometimes fail, but we hopefully always adapt. We’re transparent about it, we’re brave -- who else publishes product research while in Beta for the scrutiny of customers as well as competitors? Our leaders consciously and intentionally nurture a culture of trust and respect - really we demand it of ourselves and each other. Our leadership team demonstrably shows greater trust in each other than I have seen before. To me, all of that lines up against working toward our mission. Together. Doing better is an encompassing “why” for me now, but I believe “doing better” is only part of the mission at Macmillan Learning. Doing better means supporting our technology team members to be strong owners and customer experience advocates, supporting our customers directly, and partnering with our product and learning science teams to support the development, testing, and validation of hypotheses we have on improving teaching and learning.  So for those of you who may be job seekers that are looking for your next opportunity during this time of great change, I encourage you to think about your own “why”. There are many reasons people work in tech, but for me, finding work in tech that supports a learning mission has been infinitely rewarding. So think about why you work, the impact you want to have on your own lives as well as the lives of others, and how you can do better. It made all the difference for me in my career. And if our mission and values align with your why’s, consider working at a mission-driven company like ours. Come ready to continue to learn!   ... View more