Here at Macmillan Learning, we understand that not every student, course or institution is exactly alike. Which is why we want to provide instructors with the freedom to create course materials that fit the goals and objectives of their course. By giving instructors the ability to combine their own original content with Macmillan Learning content, we can create the best custom solution to meet your needs. And the best part is we can do this in an easily accessible, digital format!   What can we customize?   Anything we publish! The Macmillan Curriculum Solutions team is able to customize e-books as well as our digital courseware solutions, Achieve and LaunchPad. We are able to add exciting interactive content to all of these platforms to give your students a digital courseware experience that meets them right where they are, online. With features available ranging from additional readings, assessments, videos and other interactive content, we’ve got you covered.   What do other instructors do to customize their courseware or e-book?   As Macmillan’s Custom Marketing Manager, I’ve seen some amazing projects come across my desk recently. Some of the most unique and interesting projects involve incorporating local students into the content. Seeing their peers reflected in their course materials can be incredibly impactful for your students. And whether it is profiles of current and former students, pictures, video or artwork produced by students, or exemplary student projects used as examples, all of these are options in customizing Macmillan courseware.    Outside of incorporating students into their project, many instructors include videos, interactives or other dynamic content they have created. Some instructors organize their projects around a theme that involves a selection read by the entire school, freshman class, or cohort. This creates an opportunity for meaningful conversations among students, faculty, and sometimes even the author of that reading selection.    How does it work?   Customization is a collaborative effort! Your Macmillan Learning sales representative will work with you and an editor from our Curriculum Solutions department to create the custom courseware that works best for you and your students. We provide guidance on selecting content, proofreading services and clear all permissions necessary to get your content ready by the start of the semester. Most projects take anywhere from 3-6 months to complete depending on complexity, but the time and the effort are all worth it! ... View more

As we start the semester, don’t forget that Macmillan provides a variety of tools to help get your students registered for your class. You can see slides, videos, and syllabus inserts on our First Day of Class page to get you through the start of the semester regardless of which product you’re using.  That said, a few students will always run into some issues, so here is one easy thing, per product, to tell your students or do yourself.    “I’m still waiting for the code.” When students buy access to Achieve, LaunchPad, or Sapling through the Student Store , they do not get emailed an access code; they purchase the access directly to the product. Some students wait for the email to arrive that includes their access code. That’s not necessary (and no email will arrive with a code). Once you pay for access, you can enter the product.    “I can’t find your course on the Store.” LaunchPad: We sometimes get reports that students “can’t find” their instructor’s LaunchPad course. Remember, you need to activate your course in order to make it available for students. And if you activate the course at 1pm on Monday, it won’t appear in the Student Store at 1:02pm on Monday; it will appear the next day.  Sapling: If you are using a Sapling course that is LMS-integrated, then that course is NOT available to buy through the Student Store. Students can only purchase access directly through SaplingLearning.com. So if students can’t find your course on the Store, that’s one likely reason.  Achieve: You need to make your Achieve course Active before students can enroll into it. You also are asked for your course start date when you set up your course. If your course starts on 1/25 and you put that into Achieve, your course will remain in draft status until 1/25, which is why students won’t be able to purchase access until 1/25.  If you have more questions, you can always check out our Support Community for more help.   ... View more

As you likely know, we at Macmillan Learning have a ton of help articles in our Support Community. What is the best way to find what you're looking for?  If you are just getting started, there are "Getting Started" pages for each of our digital products. To find them, go to the main support page (https://macmillan.force.com/macmillanlearning/s/) and scroll to the bottom to find the digital product that you're using from the list of icons.   If you click on, for example, the logo for Achieve, you will be directed to a page where the articles are organized by Topic and there is a "Getting Started" link at the top. If you are new to the product, I'd start with the Getting Started information. If you know generally what you're looking for, say something about student refunds, simply click on that "Refunds and Returns" box to find a number of relevant articles. (Keep in mind, those articles will be for both students and instructors.)   Alternatively, if you have a precise question, when you first get to the support page (https://macmillan.force.com/macmillanlearning/s/) you can click on the "Search" box.  I would then recommend that you use the filters (Role and Products, for sure) and then search for the topic such as "extra credit." You can use the Article Features option to search for articles with videos. When you narrow your search using the filters, in this case, Instructor using Achieve, then the article that comes up (see in the gray box) is more likely to be the answer you need.   Happy searching!      ... View more

2021 is off to a great start and we have improvements to Achieve to note already!  Students with multi-term access will be able to transfer their enrollment to a second semester deep integrated course Deleted iClicker sessions will no longer be included in the Achieve gradebook From within the Achieve e-book, students and instructors can access "read aloud" text to speech features from within course readings. (Note, available on iOS outside of the Macmillan app) From within the Achieve e-book, students and instructors can access content formatting options like font size, font type, line height and background color from within course readings.   ... View more

We want to make sure you're ready to wrap up 2020 (phew!) and begin preparing for next semester as January (or February) are right around the corner.  Sign up for teaching tips for 2021 if you're looking to stay crisp next term.  If you're looking for innovative teaching ideas, check out our Webinars on Demand recordings.  Don't forget to check out iClicker for new ways to engage your students (online and in-person) throughout the term.  And as always, check out our Support Community if you run into any questions while getting ready for 2021.  Here's to a fabulous 2021!  ... View more

Check out the Upcoming Webinar:   Unlocking Student Engagement with Learning Science Thursday, December 10, 2020| 30 Minutes Register for the webinar or sign up for the recording:  https://go.macmillanlearning.com/recordingregister-201210-unlocking-student-engagement-with-learning-science.html    How can learning science impact your course design? Erin Scully, Senior Director of Learning Research & Analytics at Macmillan Learning, will share practical advice on how the student-centered approach taken in the development of our Achieve platform led to a research-based learning model that can be used by instructors to amplify the learning science in their course design  regardless of which online tools are in use. ... View more

We just added a number of new features to Achieve in order to make your experience (and that of your students) even better in 2021. Here’s a quick recap of the changes. Foundational Experience Instructors can set an assignment to be worth 0 points or ungraded , which means it has a due date, but doesn't report to the gradebook Instructors can make an assignment extra credit   Updates to completion status indicators in the item for instructor and students   Instructors migrating from Sapling can surface their assessments in Achieve (if they have a course in Achieve) I f you integrate your Achieve course with your LMS, nongraded content can now be integrated in addition to any graded assignments you have integrated.  Reporting and Insights Instructors can view time-on-task data for assignments   Writing Students are now able to meet MLA and APA style guide requirements (e.g. page numbers, headers, and works cited) and access in-tool support to ensure proper documentation; instructors are able to view properly MLA/APA formatted documents as well.   Diagnostics Students can take practice and final tests past the due date without instructors having to set a late penalty. Students submitting past the due date will receive 0 in the gradebook but they will no longer be blocked from moving on to the study plan. Instructors can still customize the late penalty in diagnostic settings.   Gradebook New gradebook categories added to a section manager will be reflected in restricted access sections   Help The help has been improved and expanded (and moved to the bottom left of your screen) to make it easier to get point of service help when you need it.      (And if you want to know what else has happened this fall, check out this earlier article.) ... View more

December 10 | 3:00 PM ET How can learning science impact your course design? Erin Scully, Senior Director of Learning Research & Analytics at Macmillan Learning, will share practical advice on how the student-centered approach taken in the development of our Achieve platform led to a research-based learning model that can be used by instructors to amplify the learning science in their course design regardless of which online tools are in use.   Register today to save your seat! REGISTER HERE ... View more

Keep track of all the updates to Achieve throughout the semester! I will update this as releases occur--and there will be a different blog post for Spring 2021 releases.  New Features: The session timeout duration has being extended to 8 hours from 4 hours Instructors can view students' individual results for a diagnostic pre-test, study plan, or post-test Instructors can download LearningCurve student data to a CSV file "Master section" is now renamed to be "Section Manager" The confirmation banner that displays when admins and customer support copy a template for an instructor course so that the banner will include a link to the course. New insight cards available for student login activity and assignment score snapshots Changes:  Instructors will be able to preview and view results for diagnostic study plan items Added a message that tells students when they reach the target completion threshold in a diagnostic study plan Updated LearningCurve challenge question feature so users can identify the issue type and add an email if they want to be contacted Updates to assessments made in the section manager will flow down to section courses Students will no longer be able to access hidden assignments from the gradebook Copying a course will retain the weighted gradebook categories of the source course Empty gradebook categories won't be considered in the total course calculation Draft due dates will push from the manager section to restricted access sections (right now only the final due date is reflected) - (Writing Tools Only) Instructors will be able to edit a writing assignment up until the moment a student starts drafting a paper - (Writing Tools Only) ... View more

Do you need technical support setting up a grade book, opening up a course for students, creating assignments, or anything else? If you are using Achieve, LaunchPad, iOLab, or Sapling, and you need technical support, visit the Macmillan Support Community, where you can search our knowledge base, chat, or fill out a form describing what's going on. (And that goes for instructors and students alike!) ... View more

There will be maintenance to LaunchPad, Sapling, and FlipIt from 12:01am Eastern until 7:00am Eastern (7 hours) on Sunday morning, November 8. None of those products will be available during that time. In additional, all assessments in Achieve will be unavailable during those 7 hours (although other parts of Achieve like the e-book and videos will be useable during that time). A notice will go up in the relevant systems 7 days in advance to alert students to this work, although we pick Sunday AM as the time to do this maintenance as it's when historically we have the lowest number of users in our products. Please make any adjustments to your assignments and sleep in (or go to bed early or nap then, if you're in a different time zone) and thanks for your patience with us.  ... View more

As you may have seen, we have been adding to the library of insights that are available in Achieve--and we have even more options available as of our recent update.    Go to Reports. You will see two of the default insights. If you click on “Add Widget” in the upper right, you will get more options.    You can add any or all of these ‘widgets’ to your course. Simply click on “Add Widget” as appropriate.   Once you have added what you need, close this window you can then make edits to each insight by clicking on the ‘three dots’ in the relevant insight card.      Select the “Edit widget.” (You can remove this widget as well.)     On the editing screen, you can change the title of each card and, depending on the particular widget in use, edit the date range or the particular assignments you want to see, and so forth.  Using these ‘widget’ cards, you can then set up your Insights page to show you just what you want to see about your students in an effort to help your students Achieve More.  As you likely guessed, we will continue to add options to this Insights page, so let us know if there are other metrics that you’d like to see in order to make your students successful. (You can give feedback by using the survey at the bottom of any in-use insight card.)     ... View more

When we first started bringing students into Macmillan Learning’s Austin office (remember those days!) to give us their feedback on Achieve, we asked them all sorts of questions to help figure out how we were going to design and develop, and later, improve, Achieve. One thing that students told us over and over, regardless of school type or major, was that they needed more tools to help them succeed as students generally, outside of the course-specific content.  With this information in mind, continuing to work with students and instructors, we’ve come up with a series of Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys. What is the content? At the beginning of the semester, a new, optional Intro Survey asks students to consider their goals for the class and to think about how they plan to manage their time and learning strategies. Later, Checkpoint surveys get students to reflect on what's been working and what has not so that they can decide to make changes on their own. Each survey that students complete generates a report that gives instructors a bigger picture of how their class is doing beyond their grades.  While the surveys are most effective when used throughout the semester, it’s never too late to assign a Checkpoint survey to encourage self-reflection. (See below for sample reports.)  Where can I find this content? Under the new Innovation Lab label in each Achieve course's Resources, you will find Achieve's new Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys, a series of short, assignable surveys that accomplish exactly what the name implies: goal-setting and self-reflection at key points across the semester. What is the status of this project? This content is still a work in progress. We want instructors to use these surveys with their students this fall and then give us feedback on how things went, so we can continue to revise and improve this content.  How can I get involved?  All you need to do is assign the surveys and we will reach out to you with more information.  What do the reports look like? Here are two sample screenshots to give you an idea. (They look great, I think!)  You can find the reports in  an Innovation Lab tab in the Reports area of Achieve.            ... View more