How Life Works author James Morris explains why climate change should be included in introductory biology textbooks, resources, and curricula.   Climate change is one of the most pressing and urgent issues in our world today, and it's one that students should learn about.  It poses significant risks to human health and well-being, as well as to the natural systems that sustain life on Earth. It’s a topic we should not shy away from in classrooms and course materials.  Therefore, I read with interest Aliya Uteuova’s article in The Guardian “US college biology textbooks failing to address climate change, study says.” In the article, Uteuova reports on a study by Rabiya Arif Ansari and Jennifer Landin at North Carolina State University. They examined climate change coverage in college-level introductory biology textbooks and found that it is inadequate, decreasing, and often relegated to the end of the textbook. I couldn’t agree more with their findings and the need for increased coverage of this critical area. This is why Biology: How Life Works is an exception to this trend. In writing HLW, my co-authors and I highlighted climate change ever since the first edition, with even more coverage of this topic in our most recent 4 th edition. Notably, HLW was not included among the textbooks examined in the study. For example, in Chapter 1, we outline six grand themes that help students see the big picture, not unlike the core concepts outlined in Vision and Change. One of our grand themes is human impacts, which is emerging as a key concept in biology. Human impacts range from climate change to habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution, and overharvesting, to name just a few. By introducing them upfront, from the very start, we draw students’ attention to the collective and often destructive impact we are having on the planet. And, in contrast to many other textbooks and frameworks in biology, HLW is one of the few that highlights human impacts as a 21 st century core concept in biology. Throughout the ecology section, we return to the subject of climate change. It is discussed at length in the chapter on biogeochemical cycles. We examine it again when discussing populations, species interactions, and ecosystems. We have an entire chapter on the human hand in environment and biodiversity, showing not only the latest data on how and to what degree climate has changed, but why it has changed, what its actual and projected consequences will be, and what we can do as citizens. Possible solutions and reasons for hope are also recommended by the authors of the study. In HLW, we have eight cases that highlight current research and issues, such as cancer, the human microbiome, and the challenges of feeding a growing human population. In the fourth edition, we included a new case – climate change. The cases highlight important issues, while also tying together a set of chapters. In this way, the cases motivate students and help them make connections among different topics. They end with a set of questions that challenge students to find solutions. The case on climate change also includes a podcast, where an author interviews a scientist doing research in this area. Finally, a photograph of a family of polar bears graces the cover of our most recent edition. The photograph was captured by award-winning photographer Paul Nicklen in Spitsbergen, Norway. As summers grow longer, polar bears, like the ones on the cover, are increasingly threatened. So the cover itself is a call to action on climate change. In bringing students’ attention to climate change, we are not just highlighting a current issue. We are also emphasizing the central importance of the carbon cycle to life on Earth. Of all the topics in introductory biology, the carbon cycle is one of the organizing principles that we want students to learn and understand. Climate change then provides a lens through which students critically examine the short-term (biological) and long-term (geologic) carbon cycle, as well as the many places they intersect and our participation in it. Introductory biology should provide a foundation for students, while also helping them to understand the world around them. As one of the most critical issues of our time, climate change should certainly find a home in introductory biology textbooks, resources, and curricula. James Morris Brandeis University Discover more about Dr. James Morris and his passion for teaching biology and sparking wonder in students.  ... View more

One of my most profound memories of growing up was having Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house. My grandparents migrated north to New Jersey from the rural coast of North Carolina in the mid-fifties. They paved the way for my grandmother’s siblings to all eventually migrate north and settle with their families near my them at the Jersey shore.   My grandparents were proud people who sacrificed everything they had to provide passage for our family out of the  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his I Have a Dream Speech at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. 08/28/1963 ARC Identifier 542069segregated south into the freedoms and opportunities promised in northern communities.  My sister and I were always excited to make the hour or so drive to the shore to visit my grandmother, the surviving matriarch of the family, on those Sunday afternoons after church.  Although our grandfather passed away when we were very young, we felt a strong sense of pride and love that we knew had been created by both of their hard work and steady hearts and was there, waiting to touch everyone who entered into that home.   By the time we arrived at my grandmother’s house, relatives had already begun to filter into the living room, laughing and sharing stories from the past. There was a familiar sense of safety and peace that we each felt knowing that we had created something special that we would always share -- a common heritage and history that transcended blood-ties and family trees. We were the survivors of Jim Crow and the promise now of an opportunity to be who we were always meant to be, a people born with freedoms and dreams.   The smell of great soul food and the sounds of warm laughter would bring us together in anticipation of a meal at the dining room table -- the most intimate space to share. When dinner was ready to be served, we would all stand around the dining room table and hold hands and pray. All the food would be perfectly assembled on the table, as we waited quietly for one of my uncles or my father to bless the meal.  In those moments, I noticed that on the wall in my grandmother’s dining room, was a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My grandmother had done what so many Black families had done who were survivors of the Jim Crow south and who had witnessed the call for America to step into the light of equality and racial justice.  She joined the ranks of countless Black southerners living in the north, who felt pride and even a duty to prominently display a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in their home.  My young mind couldn’t appreciate the true meaning behind his presence at every Sunday dinner, watching over our every word and peering into our hearts with a stoic moral reminder of how far we’d come. There were plenty of framed pictures of family members freckled throughout my grandmother’s house on mantles, dressers, tables, and in photo albums that we enjoyed thumbing through after we had our fill of fellowship at the dining room table.  However, that picture hanging in my grandmother’s dining room was different from the other pictures set throughout her house. The picture of Dr. King wasn’t really a picture as much as it was an image of ourselves, reminding us of how fragile freedom really is and how the sacrifices of the civil rights movement can easily be undone when we forget the faces of those who dared to embolden our self-worth and our right to dream the impossible dreams that push America to be better to its people.  Dr. King was there with us- while we sat laughing together in the living room, while praying words of thankfulness before eating, and while we gathered ourselves to leave and return to our own homes.  He was there to remind us that freedom is a long march, not a fleeing spring, and that the best of him was in all of us as we marched forward into the promises that awaited us in the future. His eyes, faithful and focused, pushed us to never forget that just a generation prior to that moment, we were limited by the confines of segregation and a generation before that, we were oppressed by the yoke of slavery.  His presence, there in the middle of our family gathering each Sunday, was meant to motivate us to continue the march forward and uncover new opportunities, for ourselves and those around us. The march toward equality and the freedom to realize our greatest potential is not reserved for the privileged, but rather a blessing that we share with each other.  We reject the barriers of injustice and hatred that can so easily divide us as people. As I look toward remembering Dr. King during this national day of remembrance, I am honored to have had Dr. King’s presence alive in our family gatherings, reminding me to continue the march towards freedom and justice for all.  ... View more

Macmillan really walks the walk. There are few truly mission-driven companies out there, and Macmillan Learning is one of those companies: Chris Paddock, Senior Director of User Experience This month, Macmillan Learning launched a new company mission and vision, supported by our core values. The words are new; the actions they embody are not. They codify a mission that we already live, a vision that we believe is within reach, and a set of values that inspire how and why we work the way we do each day.  Our mission and vision provide us with a critical focus. Each of us has made choices that led us to work at Macmillan Learning and these statements help us recommit to the work we do. It's the choices we make that lead us to embrace a vision for the future that is both astonishing to contemplate and yet within our collective grasp: We envision a world in which every student succeeds.  Success is often defined first by what’s possible; however, what is possible is no simple measurement, and not conferred by others upon us; rather, it rests with each individual, as part of a family or group, as part of what citizenship means in a world that is so reliant on educational opportunity to shape it. It is why living our mission meaningfully affects our individual and collective futures, and we live our mission by inspiring what’s possible for every learner.  It’s learning that makes things possible; I’d argue, it has the potential to make all things possible. At work, in the classroom, remotely or via online engagement, learning is a tool with  endless applications; a catalyst for a new, more meaningful set of possibilities for each learner. It is as true for a student at the beginning of their educational journey as it is for the Macmillan Learning team member invested in a career dedicated to helping others. And for each of us, it is through the values that we live that we join every learner on their journey.  True to ourselves. True to our customers. To be true requires integrity, empathy, and dedication. It requires that we be mindful of each decision we make and understand its effect on learners around the globe and on each other as colleagues. When we do this right, we positively and sustainably impact the educational lives of people everywhere.  Inclusion is a choice we make every day. Diversity is a fact; Inclusion is a choice. It is a choice we consciously choose to make every day; one that enables us to work together honestly and authentically. It is a choice that allows us to broaden our educational reach to increasingly wider and diverse audiences, and it is evidenced through our ability to support the learning of every individual along the way. Learning is a journey we are on together. As individuals. As teams. As a company. In concert with authors, content collaborators, outside partners, administrators, educators and, most importantly, students. Now more than ever we have the ability to help any student learn what is important to their success, when and where they are best suited to learn it, and inspire in them the why that will carry them forward on their educational journey. The paths we walk together not only make knowledge more accessible, they enable the development of practical skills and support each student’s well-being, sense of belonging, and intrinsic motivation to succeed.  Shaping tomorrow with today’s ideas.  It is a great reward to know our content, courseware, and learning platforms can positively impact educational outcomes as well as the very opportunities students encounter throughout their education. Our partnership with authors brings new perspectives and points-of-view to new and established fields of inquiry. Our collaboration with digital innovators within and outside Macmillan Learning fosters work that reaches students the world over in ways that help to democratize education and change the trajectory of individual lives.  We are in the business of doing good, and I’m proud of the direction that we’re headed. I hope you join me and your colleagues as we continue to explore how a collective mission set upon a vision of a better world for every student can continue to motivate our work at Macmillan Learning.    ... View more

Every great company has a culture that makes it special, differentiating it from other companies. Culture is the result of the people working together toward a common goal.  It’s the reason why they come to work each and every day. Everything we do at Macmillan Learning is in service of fulfilling our common goal. It's at the heart of what we stand for and why our employees remain inspired to do such amazing work.  Our daily mission and vision for the future has evolved along with the needs and focus of the community we support. For the past year, we have been reflecting on our business, our teams, and our communities. We interviewed and surveyed customers, leaders, authors, students, and our employees without any preconceived ideas to better understand their beliefs about our company.  Through collecting and measuring the data, some common themes emerged. We thought long and hard about what everyone had to say and the feedback confirmed we’re making the right moves to prepare for the future, and an ever- changing education landscape. It also helped us to articulate the journey that Macmillan Learning has been on for quite some time -- to help inspire a better future for every student. Or, in other words, inspire what’s possible.  Earlier today. Macmillan Learning announced to our employees a revised mission, vision, and stated company values and I am excited to now share it more broadly. Our mission, vision and values are meant to be living statements - ones that symbolize the passion and purpose we all feel for the work we do every day.  You will see these everywhere from our website to our offices; our promotional materials to our social media. You’ll hear our team talking about what it means to live this mission and these values; what it means to work toward this critically important vision.  They are reflections of our team as much as guideposts directing our efforts as we navigate a rapidly changing landscape with ongoing challenges of learning loss, access, AI, and more. While the phrases may be new, these sentiments have been a part of our company’s culture for quite some time. At Macmillan Learning, we believe that through our work, actions, content, and courseware we are making an impact on the educational ecosystem. And through that impact, we are helping to inspire what’s possible for each and every learner.   Our Mission:                                                                                            Our Vision: Our Values       Collectively, Macmillan Learning’s mission, vision, and values serve as the foundation upon which we will continue to work and build toward the future. This is what inspires our work; it is who we are. And it is the foundation of our partnership with educators and students. ... View more

End-of-year book lists are subjective, by nature.  There are so many genres, authors, formats and other options to choose from in any given year, and there’s only so much time in any given day to read.  So when asked “what was your favorite book this year,” naturally a group of publishers had a difficult time choosing just one. We opened up the list of potential books to anything that they read in 2022 -- whether or not it was published this past year, no matter the publisher, and eliminated other qualifiers.  The list they offered us represents a diverse range of perspectives, themes and more. They took company leaders on a “rich, compelling journey”, offered insight on how to develop internal startup initiatives, reflected on the impact of sleep and more.  Check out some of Macmillan Learning leaders’ favorite books this year. Charles Linsmeier, Executive Vice President & Ganeral Manager: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. The debut novel (2016) by Ghanian-American author Yaa Gyasi explores the multi-generational experience and ramifications of the Atlantic Slave Trade exposing the brutality and generational consequences that marked popluations and cultures in Ghana and the United States for centuries to come. The story is told through two branches of a family tree descending from daughters of an Asante woman, one daughter enslaved at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana and the other arranged for marriage to an English Captain at the same outpost. The story explores how this outcome affects the family trajectory, geographies, trades, and ultimately the choices of individuals from each daughter's families generation after generation. The arresting imagery was made ever-more vivid as I read the novel a week after my wife and I returned from our first visit to Ghana in September 2022, having had stepped foot in the same dungeons at Cape Coast Castle depicted in the novel where thousands of enslaved Africans awaited departure for the treacherous Atlantic Crossing under the most harrowing of conditions. In ways that only a novel can do, Homegoing adds depth and imagery that shines light on the intergenerational effect of decisions made long before us and despite all its anguish and torment showcases that all of our stories are richer and more complex than we ever give credit. Kristin Peikert, Senior Vice President, Human Resources: The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl An easy to read insight into the inner workings of Dave's stream of consciousness, you will be reminded that even rock stars have low moments through life. But by staying humble, chasing your passion, and remaining dedicated to hard work it’s still possible to wake up each morning in awe thinking "How on earth did I get here"? The connections he's made along his journey are interesting for sure, but for music lovers, will spark the need to turn to your vinyl or music collection to reminisce about those tunes that mark your own memories over the years.   Kate Geraghty, Vice President, Communications & Training: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri I hadn’t read Lahiri’s debut novel, so I picked it up but worried it might be a bit depressing based on the description. Instead, I found it to be a rich, compelling journey through two generations of family and their lived experience in India before emigrating to the United States. Disappointment seemed the initial theme, but it was Lahiri’s detailed exploration of what it means to be an outsider, of the painful desire to belong without ever really feeling a part of something, and the impact of abandoning your identity that gave this story such emotional depth.  One of the characters notes: “...Being a foreigner…''is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parentheses in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding.'' I ended up moving next to Nikolai Gogol’s, The Overcoat given how important it was to the theme of the story. Also, a fascinating read!  Steve Hill, Senior Vice President, Technology Infrastructure, & PMO: Age Proof - The New Science of Living a Longer and Healthier Life by Rose Anne Kenny The accomplished researcher & doctor delineates chronological age from physiological age, dives into epigenetics, and then covers broad ground in what current science says about numerous factors that affect longevity.  It's an empowering book that claims 80% of aging is in our control.  I also appreciated the wake-up call on how endemic and problematic ageism is in society, it has foundationally changed my thinking. David Merryweather: The Unicorn Within by Linda K. Yates  The Unicorn Within by Linda K. Yates provides a working model for large organizations to develop internal startup initiatives that target new innovative growth of current models and the development of not yet discovered products and business models that expand the breadth and depth of their market.  Linda launched Mach49 as the first Silicon Valley Incubator / Accelerator focused on helping global enterprises obtain meaningful growth.    Daryl Fox, Senior Vice President, STEM & Custom: This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin and Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker I had a lot of favorite books this year, and one ongoing theme for me in 2022 was neuroscience. I read eight books in this category. My two favorites were Daniel Levitin's This is Your Brain on Music (Penguin) and Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep (Simon & Schuster). I can honestly say that I now better understand how and why I learn to play new cello pieces, and have changed when I practice and what I do during practice. Why We Sleep taught me how profoundly impacted our modern society is by inadequate sleep -- everything from increased auto accidents to learning and memory loss. And at company events and dinners when my colleagues are asking for my zodiac sign, I’m going to ask them how many hours of sleep they get per night. Shani Fisher, Vice President, Social Sciences: 52 ways to walk: The surprising science of walking for wellness and joy one week at a time by Annabel Streets My favorite non-fiction book this year was 52 ways to walk  by Annabel Streets. I started walking for exercise in earnest during the pandemic to clear my head after work until a friend convinced me to start the day with a walk.  This book has so many ideas that have made me appreciate living just one block from Central Park where I can “ Walk, Smile, Greet, Repeat” (week 3) or “Walk as Meditation” (week 51). There are endless benefits to walking—psychological and physical—and the author brings these facts into each suggested walk from a variety of research. (And, if you’ve started Dave Myers How Do We Know Ourselves, this author also fits the phenomenon of surname-occupation matching!)    Erin Harper-Ray, Vice President, Sales Operations: The Paper Palace, by Miranda Cowley I devoured this book -- could not put it down. Imagery that brings the setting to life on each page. Flawed and conflicted characters and relationships. What's not to like?        ... View more

With the end of the year quickly approaching, I have been reflecting on the building blocks of my team’s success in 2022. Success happens when we all seek to develop effective leadership skills.  As a way to center my team and create an even more inclusive environment for working and leading together, I introduced 5 key qualities for success: Collaboration, Communication, Curiosity, Creativity, and Co-elevation.  I have since seen the team flourish. These qualities have helped us learn and grow, and they are what drive the best team in the industry--from the seasoned veterans to the emerging learners.  Collaboration means working together in new ways and getting diverse perspectives. In the past year, I have seen my colleagues continue to hone their skills in working remotely and learning from one another in ways we could not have imagined just a few years ago. We have mastered the new tools that bring us together virtually (hat tip to you Jamboard, Slack, Google Meet, and Mural!), yet we have embraced opportunities to meet in person again (yes there was hugging!).  These reunions provided so much joy and helped us exercise some muscles we hadn’t used in a while. Being together definitely fuels our engines. Communication means exchanging new ideas, information, and understandings. I recently spent time with our newest editorial team members honing these skills, inspired by Erica Dhawan’s, Digital Body Language. Dhawan wrote, “These days, we don’t talk the talk or even walk the talk. We write the talk.” Her book underscores the importance of written communication and making a continuous effort to minimize the risk of misunderstanding. Communicating carefully empowers us to collaborate confidently. Start with a simple step to improve your communication: identify your preferred method of communicating, and ask your closest team members about theirs. Their answers may surprise you!  Curiosity means asking questions and seeking out answers. Curiosity is what gets me out of bed in the morning. What challenges will we face today? How can we work to help students and educators be more successful? At the National Council for the Social Studies conference earlier this month, I was inspired by teachers seeking ways to expand their toolbox for supporting students. We talked about the realities of learning loss as students missed essential school experiences during the pandemic. One teacher mentioned handwriting as an obstacle to success now that students have returned to classrooms. It was a light bulb moment for me when she said, “I don’t know if they even picked up a pen during the whole pandemic!”  It has helped me move away from thinking too big; instead, I’m asking more questions about incremental support we could offer. How can we best help students gain skills? How can we help them practice in a way that will elevate their learning? Creativity is the critical thinking skill that allows us to “think outside the box” and come up with original solutions to problems.  There are as many creative solutions as there are problems to solve, and I believe that this starts with asking questions. You may have brainstormed to generate creative new ideas, but have you ever tried question storming? Max Joles defines question storming as “a design and innovation technique that focuses on generating questions rather than ideas in the early phases of a project.” Teams then work together to find the most compelling and actionable questions to try to answer.  I challenged my team to ask 50 questions in 15 minutes on a focused topic, and we well exceeded this goal. It turned out that changing the way we generated ideas led to new ways of thinking. This technique is also being used in classrooms to promote student engagement.  Co-elevation is a superpower I continue to look to sharpen.  I first learned about this concept in Keith Ferrazzi’s Leading Without Authority. Co-elevation means working together with colleagues from different departments, with different skill sets, at different levels, with different backgrounds (and likely different preferences for communicating!), and regardless of managerial reporting lines,  to accomplish what otherwise may have been impossible. This concept defies long-held best practices in the workplace of answering to one manager and following one leader on a straight path to completing a goal. Self-forming teams co-elevate using the first 4 C’s (Collaboration, Communication, Curiosity, and Creativity) to solve today’s challenges with their diverse, collective expertise and ideas. These nimble, cross-functional teams share a passion and a mission to reach new levels of success through trust and caring. I see co-elevation at work every day, best exemplified by the finalists in our 2022 Innovation Tournament. Diverse groups of colleagues co-elevated to improve efficiency, products, our customer’s experience, and our company culture and further motivated all of us toward these goals.  Like an athlete who has to practice regularly to stay in shape, we all need to exercise our muscles to strengthen these important qualities, especially as we think ahead to the goals we want to achieve in the year ahead. What leadership qualities do you want to exercise for success in the new year? Which one of the 5 C’s would best help you achieve your goals?  ... View more

With the end of 2022 just around the corner, we asked several Macmillan Learning leaders what their favorite blog was this past year and why they enjoyed it. With nearly 50 to choose from, the answers varied as much as the blogs themselves. Favorites included interviews with authors, highlights from our research on equity in education, the impact of our Employee Resource Groups and more.  Take a look at some of the Learning Stories blogs that struck a chord. We look forward to sharing new Learning Stories with you in the coming year! Susan Winslow, Macmillan Learning CEO: Around the Changing World with Eric Chiang   It was hard to choose just one. While this year’s most useful and tangible deals with active learning strategies, I decided to choose the one that featured our author Dr. Eric Chiang because it didn’t get as much attention as it deserved to. In particular, I like how he relates his travel experiences to writing and teaching. Encouraging students to gain a better understanding of the human experience -- no matter which society, ethnicity or nationality -- couldn’t be more important.  Tim Flem, Senior Vice President, Product:  Macmillan Learning Author Spotlight: Dr. Uzzie Cannon from Norfolk State University.  Dr. Cannon notes that Toni Morrison's Beloved played an important role in her education, introducing her to African American novels--Beloved was also my inspiration to take an undergraduate course that centered on the great African American women novelists! I especially appreciated Dr. Cannon's point in her blog that reading from diverse perspectives is the most powerful way to introduce students to important DEI concepts: "How can we expect students to know or understand things which they haven’t experienced or perceived?" Based on Dr. Cannon's recommendation, Kiese Laymon's Heavy is at the top of my reading list for 2023! Coltrane Stansbury, Vice President, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:  Economic Discrepancies within America’s Favorite Sports -- A Conversation with David Berri In this blog, David Berri notes that there is a long history of girls and women being explicitly banned from sports. Though the discrimination he describes is one that we can see playing out on our televisions and iPhones on a daily basis, the reality is bigger than just that. The discrepancy between the treatment of and pay differential between men and women transcends sports. It’s a topic that I care about deeply and is one of the many reasons why I’m so passionate about the work that I get to do at Macmillan Learning.   Kate Geraghty, Vice President, Communications & Training: The Diversity of Thought and Our Educational Mission by Charles Linsmeier There have been so many moments where I have keenly felt the import and gravity of what we do as an educational publisher; why working to ensure that learners have the opportunity to engage, question, and explore diverse perspectives matters so much to our society. When we witnessed legislation passing in nearly 20 states that restricted content, banning books and learning materials due to coverage of specific topics, I felt it viscerally.  This post, in response to those attacks, filled me with pride and purpose. It was a powerful statement about our commitment to free speech and our unwavering belief in our authors, in classrooms remaining secure learning environments, and the inherent human dignity of every person. “We promote the free exchange of ideas, oppose censorship, and denounce efforts that place politics ahead of pedagogy.” Yes. Just yes.  Susan Elbe, Senior Vice President, Marketing: Representation Matters: LGBT History Month Concluded With School Book Donation Inclusion is a choice we make every day is one of our core values, and giving LGBT employees a sense of belonging is critical to achieve this goal. Through outreach, allyship, mentorship and social community we continue to embrace diversity in the ML community.   We also must ensure the students who use our products are able to see their authentic selves reflected in the materials we publish, and we want to ensure the creation of those materials have input from people with LGBTQIA+ lived experience. Project Open Books is a small way of ensuring that everyone can see themselves in content no matter what age.   Charles Linsmeier, Executive Vice President & General Manager: The Power of Backpacks Full of Books by Coltrane Stansbury Community. Education. Opportunity. At no other time during my twenty plus year tenure at Macmillan Learning has our responsibility to the classroom to educators to students and to our communities been both greater and more achievable. We have broadened the ways that we can reach students from its foundation in helping students acquire new knowledge and skills to being a catalyst for deeper inquiry, contributing to their sense of belonging in their educational journey, and through our authors' works and digital products helping them aspire to achieve what is possible in their lives. Each of these themes lives in the words that Coltrane Stansbury shares in his moving Learning Stories blog about revisiting the Trenton, NJ neighborhood of this youth.  I appreciate this blog post because it illustrates so much of what I value from Coltrane and the friendship that we have developed since he came to Macmillan Learning, from stories we have shared over a memorable lunch in Newark last summer to the collaboration we have had chairing the DEI Executive Committee: an unflappable focus on the positive influence that we have and may further develop with individuals, families, and communities through the work that we do every day at Macmillan Learning.  Steve Hill, SVP, Technology Infrastructure, & PMO: How Metacognition Impacts Student Success To me paying attention to student metacognition is a bet on early learner enablement and ultimately empowering learners.  Supporting implicit and explicit means of supporting metacognition in our platform and products I think demonstrates ML's commitment to the learner.  On top of this, I believe metacognition helps build identity for a learner, allowing them to internalize learning outcomes and overall academic success as part of themselves.  Best quote "It’s completely normal to struggle." Kristin Peikert, SVP, Human Resources: How to Best Support Employees and Coworkers with Autism  Growing up with a mentally handicapped sister, this blog really hit home for me. I know firsthand that having more information available to demystify how to interact with people with disabilities would have been wildly helpful for her. As we continue learning how to become more supportive of our colleagues with differences, we are not only expanding the opportunities available to the disabled community but also enriching our perspectives beyond our own. Favorite quote: "Many of the strategies for working with autistic employees are generally good management tips and advice for working with all types of employees." Shani Fisher, Vice President, Social Sciences: Digital Learning and the Transition to Achieve: A Conversation with Dr. Michael Poulakis.   Many of us have been hard at work focusing on the migration from LaunchPad to Achieve and Dr. Michael Poulakis is no exception. He was an early advocate having participated in our beta study as we developed Achieve. He has seen the power of Achieve using the data to support teaching his students.   Editor's Choice: Marisa Bluestone, Communications Director: Sparking Wonder with Macmillan Learning Author Jim Morris As the author of many Learning Stories blogs, it’s difficult to choose a favorite. But if I had to pick, it would be this one. We created the author spotlight series this year to showcase not only the breadth and depth of knowledge of our brilliant authors, but their passion for learning and teaching. Our authors are what makes our textbooks so special, and each of them took a different path to get to where they are today. It was a delight getting to better know our Biology: How Life Works Author Jim Morris, and discover more about his incredible and unexpected career.  ... 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

The number of students who decide to attend college has ebbed and flowed over time. In May 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that total undergraduate enrollment decreased by 9 percent from fall 2009 to fall 2020 (from 17.5 million to 15.9 million students.) The declining numbers have many questioning whether or not students see value in having a college education.  So, is earning a degree relevant? Is it necessary? Is the sky falling for higher education? While the chicken littles within the education ecosystem would have us believe we should take cover, the reality is a bit more complicated. Though enrollment is down, data from a recent New America survey shows that 75 percent of Americans believe education beyond high school offers a good return on investment.  Brian Powell, Department of Sociology Professor at Indiana University, and UCLA Professor Natasha Quadlin have conducted national surveys of public views regarding college which overwhelmingly demonstrate that the American public sees a college degree as important. “The majority of Americans believe that a college education today is more important than it was a decade ago,” Powell said. Students have to weigh the cost of college and investment they’ll need to make against the value they believe they will take away from it. So while the costs are higher than ever, and the gig economy has incentivized entrepreneurship, a college education is still viewed by most as a doorway to future success.  The Data & the Value Having a postsecondary education has long been associated with better economic outcomes, like lower unemployment rates and increased earnings. According to Powell, going to college is more relevant than ever. The median annual income for college graduates was $61,100, almost double of those whose highest level of education was high school. “The income difference between a high school graduate and a college graduate is huge and continues to grow,” he noted.  The economic differences remained true during the pandemic. Employment was 86% for college graduates, 75% for those with some college and 68% for those who completed high school or the equivalent for 25- to 34-year-olds. College graduates also fared better during the pandemic. Those without a degree were more likely to work in settings that didn’t offer benefits like telecommuting and in industries that were disproportionately impacted, like service and retail.  While having a college degree is associated with higher income and more employment opportunities, a benefit of a degree extends well beyond that. “College helps individuals grow personally, socially, and intellectually. It offers opportunities to go beyond one’s own experiences, to meet people from different backgrounds, and to be exposed to new ideas,” said Powell. The “Crisis of Meaning” for Higher Ed and Possible Solutions While there are several barriers to students both deciding to get a college degree and completing it, there are solutions that can be implemented by both instructors and institutions to create a better understanding of why continuing education can help students in the long run. “College has a crisis of meaning that we must address directly with students,” said Matthew Sanders, Executive Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Social Science and Professor of Communication Studies at Utah State University. “We are not being very intentional about telling students what college is, why it matters, and what they can do with it,” he said.  The more valuable, relevant, and applicable the knowledge students acquire, the more their college degree is worth. To keep it relevant “we do need to tailor our curriculum in ways that better match these needs and teach these skills more explicitly,” Sanders noted. “We need to frame college differently, holding on to preparing students for careers, but making primary the need for them to become excellent learners in broad areas of learning.” One of the greatest challenges to college graduation is retention. According to US News and World Reports, as many as 1 in 3 first-year students won't make it back for their sophomore year. “Students need very meaningful academic experiences in the first year, or they won’t stay,” Sanders said. Students should see college as a process of becoming an educated person rather than a checklist to get a job, he added. By doing that, “So many of their struggles will become easier to address because they will see meaning in what they are doing.” According to Powell, another big obstacle for those who want to attend college is financial. Powell & Natasha Quadlin’s book Who Should Pay?: Higher Education, Responsibility, and the Public reports that Americans are well aware of the costs of college and the staggering debt that so many college students and their families have. They note that this is the reason why Americans increasingly believe that the government should take more responsibility in funding college. “If we want to encourage a college education, the best way to do that would be to eliminate the financial barriers to college that all too many Americans face.” Education benefits everyone. But education may not mean getting a college degree, “When we talk about college or higher education, it’s important to clarify that it’s not only about the bachelor’s degrees but also involves other certificates and degrees that individuals can earn beyond high school, such as technical certificates and associate degrees,” said Sophie Nguyen, Senior Policy Analyst, Higher Education at New America.  There are a lot of professions that are needed for a well-functioning society that don’t require so much time and investment in a four-year education. “And for many first-year students, this path better meets their goals,” Sanders added. That means there are other valuable and viable paths to positive socio-economic outcomes. “What is important is that everyone gets some kind of post-secondary training, education or credential. Education benefits everyone, but we need to make sure we are supporting all kinds of paths toward that end,” Sanders said. In all, there are many reasons students may decide to go to pursue college or another form of education -- from wanting the potential for a higher income, to deciding to learn a new skill. Sanders believes that education is not only relevant, but critical to our world’s future success. “The problems we are trying to solve in the world are complex. Twenty-first century job skills are those broad-based problem-solving skills that a college education gives you,” he said. You can learn more about the state of college enrollments, gain an understanding of the role that instructors can play in making courses feel worthwhile for students and get some ideas for making courses feel more relevant for students by watching this free webinar, featuring Nguyen, Powell and Sanders by clicking here. ... View more

The money saver students will love you for As an educator, you feel your students’ pain, because not so long ago you were in a similar spot. Flashback! – Whatever time, whatever age, whatever year it was, you made the conscious decision to further your education beyond your high school hallways and dive into higher education’s collegiate collective. The important, life-changing decision shaped the direction of your career and had an impact on where you are today. Between transportation, room and board, books and supplies, and the ramen noodle cups and pizza to sustain that all-night appetite, college was EXPENSIVE.   And it still is. In fact, tuition has risen 134% since 2002, according to US News data. Any additional cost is another zing on the student's wallet and may impact the student's lifestyle. Many instructors keep affordability in mind when considering resources for their students, while at the same time ensuring they get a quality educational experience. Many nickels and dimes, loonies and toonies, and all other forms of currency have been invested in these hopes and dreams. With digital innovation continuing to sweep the ed tech world, creative forms of teaching and learning have further developed the quality of education and grasp at the shortening attention span of students all over. But what works? For one, active learning. The teaching strategy has been making waves in supporting classroom engagement and knowledge retention for some time, but attention to it has increased significantly with the pandemic. It has been “student-tested, instructor-approved,” and there have been studies to back it up even in the higher education world. Although active learning has been proven to increase student performance, it can also come at a cost. So how can you balance affordability with proper pedagogy?   iClicker has partnered with many institutions across North America to help make this digital tool free for students through the Institutional Site License (ISL) program. Nicole Skwarek, a Specialist Manager in Enterprise Solutions at Macmillan Learning defined an ISL as a “centrally funded license of the iClicker student response platform. It allows instructors to use this type of technology [iClicker] in the classroom, while removing the cost burden off of students”.  iClicker is more popular than ever as a way to engage students. It has been used by more than 5,000 instructors and 7 million students in classrooms across 1,100 institutions. With that in mind, here are a few reasons why these site licenses can benefit students, administrators, and instructors alike: Students pay nothing out of pocket. Yup, you read that right. Engage and save has a nice ring to it! With an ISL, your institution covers the cost for students using the iClicker mobile app, allowing students to jump right into the class with their learning tool worry-free. One less concern to address during syllabus week! Institutional or Departmental Want to test out a site license? You can choose from an institutional site license or a departmental site license. With a departmental site license instructors and students from a certain department can use iClicker at no cost, in the same way an ISL can. Some colleges and universities try this route to dip their toes in the water first before going all in. Free iClickers = Increased Active Learning When institutions choose an ISL and remove the cost barrier, usage of iClicker significantly increases. This helps to increase student success and performance, as well as attendance. In this situation, everyone wins! On-Demand Training Don’t do any in-house training? Not to worry! A dedicated iClicker representative will be happy to provide you and your colleague's training, for both administrators and instructors, while supporting the implementation of all things iClicker. This includes Learning Management System (LMS) integration assistance. This is all pretty handy when getting set up at the beginning.  Ongoing Support So you had some training, but still have some questions? In addition to having a stellar support team, there is also an iClicker knowledge base to help answer any specific questions for students, instructors, and administrators!  Access to Usage Reports and Troubleshooting Tools Administrators who gleefully love data, we see you. Want to see who your power users are? Want to know what the usage on your campus looks like? We have tools that not only get you that data but also help you troubleshoot any questions you have on your campus.  Attend, Engage, Focus, Retain Dr. Kelly Noonan, lecturer for Economics at Princeton University, uses Princeton’s ISL for her course. Dr. Noonan teaches a large class, and when asked why she decided to use iClicker she responded, “[it] allows me to monitor attendance and understanding of the material presented during class. It also allows some interactive ‘games’ that make use of the material presented.”  The cost was a barrier for Dr. Noonan and her students, but thanks to her university’s ISL, it made for an easy choice. “Students are much more likely to attend lectures and they do respond to all polls during class.”  With iClicker, students can have their voices and thoughts heard while learning in real time. They attend their sessions, engage in the conversation, focus on the lesson, and strengthen their knowledge retention. Classrooms big and small have taught us that higher-level critical thinking and sharpened focus are a power duo born from active learning’s influence. With these tools may come some barriers, but here’s a question for educators all over: If students at your university could have free access to a tool that improves a student’s concentration and lesson recollection in and outside of class, why wouldn’t you try it out? ... View more

In the HBO Max series Julia, we are served a tantalizing account of the chef’s relationship with the legendary editor Judith Jones, who championed Julia Child’s work on what Jones rightly believed would become the definitive introduction to French cooking for home cooks in the U.S. The show conjures the glamorous life of an editor who spends her days in a New York office, pouring over a pile of typewritten manuscript, pencil in hand, and travels to Boston by train to test recipes with her favorite author in a cozy, Cambridge kitchen. Now that is a fantasy that anyone who ever grew up wanting to be an editor might dream about. Maybe aspects of publishing worked that way at some point? But as you likely guessed, almost everything about being an actual editor is different, especially now, and especially for those of us who work at an educational publisher. My career in publishing started at a small trade press, but I stumbled onto my dream job when I landed at Bedford/St. Martin’s because my favorite part of writing has always been revising. As an educational publisher, we get to ask instructors and students who use our materials what they think and how they work, and then we can actually make improvements based on what our customers need and want. Instructional content has to work in a learning ecosystem that is flexible enough to meet its users where they are. Digital content delivery is not new. Even Mastering the Art of French Cooking is now available as an ebook. (After all, cookbooks and textbooks are close relatives, designed to meet the needs of users with a range of expertise.) Publishers have created widely used quizzes, videos, tutorials, and games, on web sites and CD-ROMs for decades. We’ve seen multiple generations of learning management systems, software, and courseware launched and retired. However the rapid adoption of digital materials during the pandemic has accelerated the need to ensure digital elements—from assessment and interactives to instructional reading and video—work flawlessly together to support pedagogical goals. Editors design that content to support a variety of approaches to teaching, regardless of whether the content appears in an ebook, an assessment question, or a tutorial delivered in courseware. The added promise of digital delivery is that we can update content when needed, with an even tighter focus on the benefits to instructors and students. Instructors revise the content of their courses for many reasons–and more frequently than one might assume. In a recent large survey we conducted, over 70% of instructors in the Humanities report updating their courses to “reach students who are disengaged or struggling” at least once a term. Our research also indicates that instructors place a high value on connecting their courses to current events and developing a culture of inclusion for all students, and they are likely to update their courses regularly in order to do so. An editor not only ensures this important content is up-to-date and accessible (in all the ways) but also that it is informed by ever-evolving pedagogical practices and goals. The right idea or example delivered at the right moment for a learner could make a world of difference for someone who doesn’t understand how a class is relevant to them or believe that they can succeed in a course. That’s our hypothesis anyway. Like Jones in Julia, we want to get our hands dirty, plunge into the work of testing ingredients and learning with our colleagues. We are all motivated by learning, and even failing, unlearning, and relearning. Success requires us to question our assumptions, continually, and to do it collaboratively. Ideally we work in close, cross-functional teams; even within editorial, media editors, development editors, program managers, and program directors (once called “publishers”) all play specialized, important roles. Our colleagues in market development, marketing, sales, and product all contribute insights through the lens of their work that deepen our understanding and enable us to make better decisions. Surveys, reviews by peers, conference and campus conversations, classroom observations, sales’ feedback, and disciplinary research have long been part of how we develop an understanding of our customers. These days, as we collect new kinds of data and add new research methodologies to our toolkit, our methods are more aligned with those of our partners’ in UX, learning science, and the product team. As digital usage grows, we look for new insights, test new hypotheses, and develop a more nuanced understanding of what types of content best support students, and, more importantly, what is missing. The enduring not-so-secret ingredient in our collaborations, of course, is the role that our authors play in conceiving, testing, writing, revising, and revising (again) the content at the heart of our products. While their research and teaching experiences inform every aspect of our work together, it’s our authors’ creative energy and generosity that end up making an editor’s work engaging. So much of what I’ve learned from working with our authors has made me a better editor and colleague: Nancy Sommers’ advice about commenting on student writing, Elizabeth Wardle’s insights about writing in a new genre, Staci Perryman-Clark’s research on culturally relevant pedagogies, and Joshua Gunn’s guidance that audiences need visual breaks while listening. Our circle of collaborators is quite a bit larger than the one in Julia’s kitchen. Widen that table to include many more colleagues, all squarely focused on improving teaching and learning for the instructors and students who use our resources, and you begin to get a picture of what editors at Macmillan Learning do. ... 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

“You can’t be a great writer unless you’re reading,” said Dr. Uzzie Cannon, co-author of Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Dr. Cannon would know; she’s been an avid reader all of her life. Macmillan Learning recognizes that the success of our textbooks and courseware is in large part due to our outstanding authors, many of whom have years of experience in research and higher education. Dr. Cannon is one of those experienced educators, and it was her teaching experience and specialization in composition and pedagogy that made her the perfect candidate to co-author the latest edition of Rereading America. We recently sat down with Dr. Cannon to learn more about her own educational background and teaching interests. What we discovered is a professor who is passionate about providing her students with the skills and knowledge necessary to become successful young adults with a greater appreciation of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Dr. Uzzie Cannon, Associate Professor of English at Norfolk State University Dr. Cannon has always been an avid reader, but she didn’t initially plan on majoring in English. When she first arrived at Southern Wesleyan University to begin her undergraduate career, she thought about studying Advertising and Marketing. Nevertheless, her school didn’t offer that degree program, so she decided to major in English during her sophomore year as a way to further develop her communication and critical thinking skills. Little did Dr. Cannon know that her love of reading and writing, which her mother instilled in her during her elementary school years, would serendipitously propel her into a successful future career as an educator. “While I enjoyed my time as an undergraduate in English, I thought first about continuing my education in Journalism,” said Dr. Cannon, “but something kept gnawing in the back of my mind that I should teach.” The gnawing in the back of Dr. Cannon’s mind didn’t turn into a desire to teach until she gained teaching experience during and after her master’s degree. “I had the opportunity to work as a teacher’s assistant and tutor undergraduate students, and I also taught high school and community college,” said Dr. Cannon. When considering whether to continue onto a Ph.D. program, Dr. Cannon realized that her master’s program included more courses in writing and writing assessment than literature, and it quickly became clear that she wanted composition and pedagogy to play a large role in her future studies and teaching specialties. It was during Dr. Cannon’s time as a doctoral student at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro where literature began to take the forefront. “I wanted to live a life of the mind and share that with my students,” said Dr. Cannon. “It’s always been a priority of mine to give my students the type of experience with reading that I was privileged to have my whole life.” Dr. Cannon’s favorite genre of literature is fiction. “In terms of African American literature, I remember reading mostly poetry at first,” she said. “But I was exposed to more fiction and novelists during college, which is where I fell in love with the novel.” Dr. Cannon picked up her first copy of Toni Morrison’s Beloved at a flea market while an undergraduate student. “I had not yet heard of her, and the book was a first edition!” Up until that point, the only novels by African American authors that Dr. Cannon remembers reading were The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Clover by Dori Sanders. After reading Morrison’s Beloved, Dr. Cannon was hooked. While creative nonfiction hadn’t been on Dr. Cannon’s radar as much before, she is now trying to incorporate more into her teaching. “I find memoirs really interesting,” said Dr. Cannon. “I was blown away by Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, and I think we have a lot to learn from Gen X and Gen Y memoirs.” It’s important to Dr. Cannon that her students are exposed to a variety of genres of writing. When asked her favorite part about teaching, Dr. Cannon said it’s that ‘lightbulb moment’ when a student’s expression demonstrates true understanding of something. “It happened recently in my literature course,” said Dr. Cannon. “We were reading Kate Chopin and having a conversation about women’s sexuality and discussing why Chopin was so avant garde. Not all of the students understood what is meant by gender, so I explained how it’s a construct, and their minds were blown,” she said excitedly. For Dr. Cannon, it’s moments like this one that keep her going. “When students have that moment of awareness–of knowing something they didn’t before–that’s what makes my job worthwhile.” Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are at the center of Dr. Cannon’s teaching, and last year she presented a session titled Ways with Culture: Toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Composition Classroom at Bedford / St. Martin’s writing workshop. “I grew up in a very diverse community in Upstate South Carolina,” she said, “surrounded by all types of people and all classes of people.” Dr. Cannon credits her upbringing for providing her with an openness to other people’s ways of being. “We need to respect people for who they are as people,” she said. “It’s important to be aware of difference and to accept and appreciate it. If we’re not intentionally practicing DEI, then we’re not doing our students justice.” Just as Dr. Cannon hopes to share her love of reading with her students, she also wants her students to leave her courses with a better appreciation of diversity. One way she seeks to accomplish this is by exposing her students to a wide range of stories and perspectives. “It’s like the tabula rasa theory,” said Dr. Cannon. “How can we expect students to know or understand things which they haven’t experienced or perceived?” This applies to reading, writing, and practicing DEI. “It’s the reason I started using a composition reader in my writing courses,” said Dr. Cannon, “Rereading America is the second reader I ever used, and it’s the only one I’ve used since. It has a wide array of provocative essays that will get students talking and wanting to write.” Dr. Cannon embraced earlier editions of Rereading America, and it was a bit fortuitous that she was able to become a co-author of recent editions. “It’s sort of a funny story,” she said. “I’d just presented at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Seattle, sharing my framework for using online tools in the composition classroom, and a representative from Macmillan Learning appreciated my background in teaching. We got to talking and later asked if I would be interested in co-authoring future editions of the book.” “I agreed to it because I thought Rereading America was absolutely fantastic, and I’d already been recommending it to other faculty,” said Dr. Cannon. While she was quite accustomed to earlier editions of the book, she had been supplementing it with other materials that she wanted students to read. These selections eventually made it into the book. “It felt like a natural fit to me,” she said. Dr. Cannon credits her background as a teacher who has worked extensively on writing assessment for making the transition to co-author a smooth one. “The writing itself felt seamless,” she said. “I was prepared to make my own selections about which material I wanted to include, how to formulate good critical questions, and knowing which enrichment activities to add because I had been doing those things so often before.” After the Modern Language Association in January of 2020, Dr. Cannon spent time during the pandemic to write and edit the latest version of Rereading America. “It wasn’t as time consuming as it would have been if I’d been teaching face-to-face,” she said. Dr. Cannon used some of that extra time to continue working on another one of her passions, black and white photography. “I’ve been an avid photographer for close to thirty years,” she said, “and I like the way that black and white forces the brain to see things differently.” When not teaching or writing, Dr. Cannon likes to spend her time drinking tea and editing her photos. ... View more

Textbooks and learning materials look a lot different than they did even 10 years ago. You might remember borrowing an old textbook from your high school and looking at the inside cover to see the long list of scribbled names of students before you who used that very same book. The book even had a peculiar, stale smell to it. Or perhaps you remember being in college, making a trip to the university bookstore to purchase or rent your course materials for the new semester. You went with excitement, eager to learn about what career possibilities lay ahead of you, and thought your materials might provide you with just the answers you were looking for. As you read, you may have been disappointed to find that many examples seemed to be about a similar person–someone who didn’t quite look like you or self-identify the way you did. You may have started to become discouraged and think to yourself, “Maybe people like me can’t become an engineer, a psychologist, a business executive,” or whichever profession you dreamed of. Representation matters. More importantly, positive representation matters. But what does that look like? At Macmillan Learning it not only means signing authors and producing course materials and tools in which students feel represented and reflected, it also means a mission of inclusivity that goes beyond course materials. Macmillan Learning LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group Recognizes LGBT History Month LGBT History Month was founded in 1994 by Rodney Wilson, a Missouri high school history teacher who came out to his students after teaching about the Holocaust and informing his students that he would have been persecuted because of his sexual orientation. Wilson recognized a lack of positive representation of LGBT people in the teaching of history, and he envisioned a month in which role models could be provided for LGBTQIA+ youth. The month of October was chosen because of other coinciding LGBTQIA+ affinity days during the month: National Coming Out Day on October 11 and the commemoration of the first and second marches on Washington for LGBTQ+ rights in 1979 and 1987. One of the highlights of LGBT History Month is the spotlight of a different LGBTQIA+ historical figure each day of the month. This includes highlighting the accomplishments of LGBTQIA+ people in sports, entertainment, science, politics, and many other professions. These individuals serve as role models for young LGBTQIA+ people who may not otherwise have known of a successful queer person in their industry or desired future career. Macmillan Learning’s LGBTQIA+ employee resource group, Proud@ML, participated this year by sharing its second National Coming Out Day storytelling project externally so that students can learn about the different roles that LGBTQIA+ people hold at an educational publishing company. Proud@ML hopes that doing so will encourage LGBTQIA+ youth to pursue whichever career path they aspire to. Macmillan Learning LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group Sponsors Book Donation For Proud@ML, positive representation means creating engaging and inspiring educational opportunities for colleagues to learn more about LGBTQIA+ people, their history, and the rights they’re still fighting for. It also means giving back to communities outside of Macmillan Learning and paving the way for young people to lead a more inclusive future. During this year’s Pride Month, Proud@ML invited all Macmillan Learning employees–including those who identify as LGBTQIA+ and those who are allies–to participate in the creation of Pride floats. Teams could submit entries in contest categories such as Best Incorporation of LGBTQIA+ History, Best Pride Photo, Best Group Float, Most Visually Creative, and Best Show of Pride. Submissions ranged from videos to photo collages and included participation from employees across the company including Susan Winslow, CEO of Macmillan Learning. All category winners received recognition and a small prize. But Proud@ML wanted to do something more for the Best Show of Pride category winner, which showcased student support from a local middle school in Austin, Texas, where one of Macmillan Learning’s employees has a family relation. Texas is one of several states with increased anti-LGBTQIA+ and legislation, which greatly negatively impacts LGBTQIA+ youth. Working with Project Open Books, a small nonprofit organization that is committed to improving and promoting access to age-appropriate LGBTQIA+ books and stories, Proud@ML sponsored a donation of 10 LGBTQIA+ inclusive books for this middle school to include in its library. Macmillan Learning employees delivered the books this October as a way to acknowledge and celebrate LGBT History Month and just in time for the new school year to get underway. Two of the books donated were What Was Stonewall? by Nico Medina and Resist: 40 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up Against Tyranny and Injustice by Veronica Chambers. Both exemplify the meaning and purpose of a month dedicated to the history and teaching of important LGBTQIA+ figures and rights movements. The other books donated included fiction titles featuring LGBTQIA+ characters in main roles, which Proud@ML hopes will help LGBTQIA+ students feel represented in the stories they read. Macmillan Learning and Proud@ML know that representation matters, which is why positive representation of all types of people remains a pillar of what they do and the content they create. ... View more

Do you remember coming home from school with a backpack full of books and a couple hours’ worth of homework as a child? If not, you must be pretty lucky to not have had any homework. If so, this scenario may sound pretty familiar. You ask an adult–perhaps one of your parents, an older sibling, or another caretaker–for help with your homework, and they start using a completely different method to solve the problem than the method your teacher taught you earlier that day. “This is how I learned it,” they may tell you, and you wonder why your teacher hadn’t taught you how to solve the problem this way.  Maybe you’re a little lost at first, but you follow them along and see that they solve the problem with ease. Now you’re curious. You try to complete the same problem using the method you recently learned in class, and you see that you get the same answer using both methods. Why hadn’t your teacher taught you the method that you learned at home?  You ask your teacher the next day before class and find out that the method you learned at home requires extra knowledge about this mathematical concept, which many of your classmates haven’t yet learned. Nevertheless, there are a group of students who do understand this other method, so your teacher starts grouping you together to work on these types of problems.  This is an example of differentiated learning in which the teacher adapts what they are teaching–or the way they are teaching–to meet the needs and readiness of their students.    What is Differentiation?  Differentiation is a valuable pedagogical tool for educators to create more equitable learning experiences for every student. At its core, differentiation is a framework for effective teaching that involves providing a diverse classroom of learners with a variety of methods to understand new information, regardless of differences in ability.  In order to implement effective differentiated instruction in the classroom, educators should first do their research on an important subject–their students. By recognizing and understanding each student’s unique background, experience, and subject matter expertise, educators can better meet every student where they are and help them on their own learning journey.  While this can be an overwhelming step for educators who have large, diverse groups of students with different needs, levels of readiness, and learning styles, getting to know students better throughout the term will help instructors tailor their teaching throughout the semester, even with limited resources. Macmillan Learning’s digital learning platform, Achieve, can help simplify this step with its Goal Setting and Reflection Surveys that give students the opportunity to state and reflect on their goals and needs, and to share this information easily with instructors.    Components of Differentiated Learning Once educators have a better understanding of the students in their classroom, they can then turn their attention to the content, process, and product involved in their differentiated instruction.  Content = curriculum or what students learn Process = how students learn it Product = what students produce that shows what they’ve learned   Content At the content level of differentiated learning, educators may have the option to adapt what they are teaching to meet the needs and readiness of their students. As part of the research phase–when getting to know students–instructors might consider including a course readiness assessment or diagnostic test to gain a better understanding of what their students already know. This way they can begin tailoring the content of their lessons or providing additional reading assignments for students who might need to brush up on a few concepts.  Educators may find that they have a very diverse group of students when it comes to readiness and prior knowledge of the course’s subject matter. Some students may be completely unfamiliar with concepts and others may exhibit partial or complete mastery of certain topics.  The goal of differentiated learning is not to raise or lower standards for different groups of students but to provide learning opportunities that are appropriate and effective  for each student, providing methods for understanding a concept and absorbing new information.    Process The process level of differentiated learning further emphasizes students’ unique backgrounds, traits, and experiences while focusing on different learning styles. Instruction at many universities has often followed a one-size-fits-all approach, mostly through the delivery of lectures. It was very instructor-centric rather than student-centric.  Differentiation gives instructors that chance to focus on the individual, to ensure that each learner can achieve their fullest potential. Students’ culture, socioeconomic status, language, gender, motivation, ability, disability, previous educational experiences, interests, and many other factors have shaped them to create totally unique learners.  Taking into account different learning styles, educators can help students by working with them to develop tailored study plans or by varying content delivery methods through things like reading assignments, lecture, active learning, peer learning, and so on.   Product The product level of differentiation is understood as what each student produces at the end of a lesson or course to demonstrate mastery of content. This can take the form of tests, evaluations, projects, reports, or other assessments.  Instructors should think about what they expect students to show and accomplish on each assignment and at the end of the course. They should ask themselves how they might change their grading scale and expectations, acknowledging that each student starts from a different place and that progress is the main goal. Might you choose to grade on a curve or award students points for showing their work? With differentiated learning, students should have the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned in various ways; again, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.    Tips for Scaling Differentiation in Large Courses Implement one small change. Educators can start small. In a recent webinar about academic integrity, Cindy Albert from the University of Wisconsin-Eau-Claire advocated that faculty start by making one small change when seeking to level up their teaching. This can also apply to differentiation.  Use learning platforms (ed tech) that deliver personalized learning experiences. Learning Curve in Macmillan Learning’s digital learning platform Achieve offers students a more personalized learning approach.  Aggregate the data using tools like Achieve and iClicker. Achieve offers Goal Setting and Reflection Surveys, and iClicker can be used to take pulse checks with exit surveys, allowing instructors to quickly see in aggregate what some common needs are across students, and to drill down to the exact student-level needs.  Have you implemented differentiated learning in your classroom? Let us know in the comments below. ... View more