What happens when we stop grading just for accuracy and start grading for learning? In this thoughtful Coffee with Colleagues conversation, instructors shared practical strategies for shifting from traditional grading to a feedback-rich, growth-minded approach. Learn how to encourage risk-taking, support neurodiverse learners, and implement ungrading techniques that prioritize student progress over perfection. Explore the full summary here! ... View more

Cultivating Belonging Through Assessments: Ensuring Every Student Feels Valued Presented by Dr. Jill Dahlman and Dr. Scott Cohn Assessments are a powerful tool not only for measuring student progress but also for fostering a sense of belonging. This session explores how assessment strategies can be designed to ensure every student feels included, valued, and supported in their learning journey. You’ll discover how to use AI to create personalized, accessible assessments and provide feedback that encourages growth and connection. Leave with practical, actionable strategies to build an inclusive environment where assessments reflect the diversity of your students and help them thrive.   Watch the recording ... View more

Authentic Assessments for Every Discipline: Engaging Techniques That Reflect Real-World Learning Presented by Dr. Charlotte de Araujo, Dr. Jill Dahlman, and Troy Joseph Authentic assessments are key to preparing students for real-world challenges by evaluating their ability to apply knowledge in practical, professional contexts. This session will show how AI can streamline the creation of authentic tasks, analyze student responses, and provide personalized feedback. Leave with actionable strategies and AI tips to design assessments that not only measure learning but also mirror the demands students will face after graduation.   Watch the recording ... View more

Taking AI Integration to the Next Level Presented by Ellen Moore and Jill Bonds Ready to go beyond the basics of AI in the classroom? This advanced session will explore practical strategies for gaining buy-in from reluctant colleagues, integrating AI tools into your syllabus, and managing classroom dynamics with ethical, accessible AI practices. Learn how to support students, streamline tasks, and foster inclusivity while preparing for the future of AI in education.   Watch the recording ... View more

Discover the transformative power of authentic assessment with the enlightening video, "Unlocking Potential: Achieve and Authentic Assessment." Join educational experts as they delve into dynamic strategies that revolutionize student learning. Erika Martinez from the University of South Florida reveals the innovative use of in-class response systems like iClicker, which not only capture real-time insights but fundamentally elevate students' learning experiences. Christin Monroe of Landmark College presents an intriguing argument for unlimited assessment attempts, inviting students to dive deeply into the material and refine their understanding in a supportive environment. Additionally, Matthew Ingram of Dakota State University discusses the flexible nature of learning curve quizzes that tailor progress tracking and inspire tailored instructional changes. Tune in to witness how Macmillan Learning tools champion engaging and effective assessments, empowering educators to unlock every student's potential. Click below to watch! ... View more

Midterms are a critical point in the academic calendar, and helping students prepare effectively can make a significant difference in their performance. It can be challenging to ensure that your students are not only ready but confident when exam day arrives. Achieve's resources—including Adaptive Quizzing, iClicker Study Tools, Multi-Take and Unpenalized Assessments, and Diagnostics—were created with your students in mind, offering personalized, interactive tools that meet their unique needs and study habits. We encourage you to explore and assign these resources in Achieve, so your students can truly reap their benefits. By doing so, you will provide your students with the best possible opportunities for self-study and success.     Adaptive Quizzing   Learning Curve Adaptive Quizzing in Achieve tailors the difficulty of questions based on what students know and helps them practice what they don’t yet understand. This feature ensures that students are constantly challenged at an appropriate level, making their study sessions more effective. How It Benefits Students Adaptive Quizzing helps students focus on areas where they need the most improvement. By adjusting the difficulty of questions, it keeps students engaged and motivated to learn. How Students Use It Students complete the adaptive quizzes by answering questions until they reach the target score. Along the way, they receive clear feedback based on their correct and incorrect answers—offering an easy way for students to review and assess their understanding of key concepts. The e-book is integrated into every question and there is no penalty for accessing it, encouraging students to read and boosting their preparedness. As students answer questions correctly, the questions get harder. Students receive more questions on the topics they struggle with. If they get stuck, they can see a hint (which reduces the point value of the question), or they can give up and move to the next question (resulting in zero points). During or after each LearningCurve activity, students can access a Personalized Study Plan, which breaks down their performance on each topic and presents them with suggestions for further practice.   How Instructors Assign It You can assign adaptive quizzes in the same way you assign other activities in Achieve. Learning Curve allows you to hide topics that aren't needed and adjust the target scores students need to complete each quiz. You can view LearningCurve results by class, topic, or by individual student. Learn more.   iClicker Study Tools   Included at no extra cost in most Achieve courses, iClicker includes a Study Tools feature that creates interactive and engaging study aids via the iClicker student mobile and web apps.  How It Benefits Students iClicker Study Tools transform classroom interactions into valuable at-home study resources, enhancing student retention and understanding. By creating flashcards and practice tests from in-class questions, students can review and reinforce their learning outside of class. How Students Use It Students can bookmark questions you've already asked in class and convert them into study tools within the iClicker app. They can create flashcards, take practice tests, and review material at their convenience. Learn more. How Instructors Enable It You can enable iClicker Study Tools by integrating iClicker activities into your course. Students will automatically have access to Study Tools, making study sessions more interactive and productive.    Multi-Take and Unpenalized Assessments   Multi-Take Quizzes provide students with multiple attempts to complete an exam or quiz. Unpenalized assessments offer students unlimited attempts at each question without penalties for incorrect answers, allowing them to use supplemental resources and view solutions afterward.  How It Benefits Students By offering multiple attempts, students can review their errors, understand where they went wrong, and try again. This iterative process boosts confidence and encourages mastery of the material by allowing students to learn from their mistakes and improve their scores. How Students Use It Students can complete the same Multi-Take Quiz up to five times, with each attempt providing insights into their performance. After each attempt, they can review the correct answers and explanations to better understand the material. The Unpenalized setting allows students unlimited attempts to complete each question with no penalty for wrong answers. They can use resources like the e-book (if available) to help them answer questions, and they can see the solution for each question after they complete it or give up. Regardless of which grading policy you select, students will see clear guidelines upon opening each assessment in Achieve. How Instructors Assign It Open up an assessment in your Achieve course, and select the Grading Settings tab. Select your preferred pre-built grading policy or create a new custom policy to fit the needs of your course.   Diagnostics   Diagnostics in Achieve courses for English and General Chemistry help identify students' strengths and weaknesses through initial assessments. These diagnostics create personalized study plans, ensuring that each student focuses on areas that need the most attention. How It Benefits Students Diagnostic assessments provide a clear picture of where students stand academically. The personalized study plans that follow help them concentrate on improving their weak spots, making their study time more efficient. How Students Use It Students begin with a diagnostic test that evaluates their understanding of key concepts. Based on their performance, Achieve generates a customized study plan with targeted resources and practice exercises. How Instructors Assign It Instructors can assign diagnostic tests at the beginning of the term or before midterms to gauge student readiness. The results help tailor instruction and support to meet the needs of each student. Grades for study plan assignments are based on how much of the study plan a student completes by the assigned due date or the end of the term. You can view Diagnostics results by class, topic, or by individual student.  ... View more

Assessments are great tools for instructors to gauge how well their students are retaining information and then using that information to solve problems. But, how do instructors ensure that their students are prepared for tests and quizzes? While in class–whether online or in-person–instructors can use iClicker to check students’ understanding and comprehension. Instructors receive real-time feedback from students about the material they may still be struggling with and can then adjust to meet their students’ needs. And, test preparation doesn’t end when class does! With Achieve, students can check their own knowledge of class concepts with adaptive quizzing and receive tips and guidance on problems they find challenging. Test, exam, and quiz may be anxiety-inducing words for many students, but with the right preparation tools they don’t have to be. ... View more

We asked some of our super users how Achieve and iClicker helped them support academic integrity in their classrooms. Here’s what they had to say: “Rather than giving limited numbers of data sets, we are able to have students use their own original data and perform calculations on their own data.” -Ed Lee, Chemistry, Texas A&M “I use LearningCurve [adaptive] quizzes, discussions, and video activities to instill effective, competent, and ethically sound communication practices.” -Matthew Ingram, Communication, Dakota State University “I personally love the adaptive quizzes in Achieve. Since each question given to students is based on their own individual performance, this guarantees that no two students get the exact same quiz. This decreases the chance of students writing these in groups and increases student understanding.” -Marissa Dahari, Molecular Biology, University of Guelph “I love how diverse the test banks are and that gives me a peace of mind when I assign material to them.” -Michael Poulakis, Psychology, University of Indianapolis. “While not seeking to identify potential academic misuse, I use iClicker attendance to promote timely arrival in class, and polling to ensure that students learn critical facets of all my courses.” -Michael Shapiro, Georgia State University Interested in ways you might be able to use Achieve and iClicker to foster an environment where students can practice concepts in a low stakes way and minimize the stress that can lead to cheating? Consider encouraging your students to use Study Tools, which is included at no additional cost with Achieve full course solutions, as a way to prepare without pressure--with no work on your part.  Looking for more ideas? Schedule a demo or training to discuss how Achieve and iClicker could support your class. ... View more

Regular and Substantive Interactions?  What’s that supposed to mean?  It seems every new memo brings a new requirement for online teachers, so when the latest one required that our online courses verify the use of regular and substantive interactions, it was tempting to just shake my fist at a new “mandate” or complain about additional work.  The other option, of course, was to really consider the design of my online writing class.  Was I providing substantive interaction to my students?  How do well-developed online writing courses – or any courses for that matter – naturally provide us with ways to interact with our students in ways that actually make meaningful connections with the content and with each other? At its basis, the federal requirement that online courses provide “regular and substantive interactions” ensures that we aren’t just handing our students a package of material and wishing them good luck as they work through the class materials.  At its best, it provides a menu of effective practices that are already embedded into our writing classes while offering the opportunity to add some new tools to our belt. One characteristic of RSI is that the instructor initiates the interactions, and there are multiple ways we do this. We set up welcome messages, we create discussion boards, and we invite them to come by our office hours, but how can we initiate conversations without adding extra work for ourselves?  Providing personalized feedback on an assignment is considered an instructor-initiated interaction, and how we choose to phrase that feedback can go a long way towards encouraging the students to interact with us.  Instead of writing a comment about WHAT a student did in an essay, why not ask a question about WHY the student made a certain writing decision?  Instead of asking students to write a reflective paragraph about their graded work, why not ask them to write a revision plan based on your feedback and bring it to their next conference? Make feedback an invitation to a conversation rather than the ending point of an assignment. Another characteristic of RSI is that interactions are frequent and consistent.  This can be something as simple as laying out a clear communication schedule letting students know they can expect an email every Monday and Friday or posting weekly announcements.  It can, however, also be providing more frequent feedback on assignments.  No, we can’t grade more essays, but we can add more checkpoints to what we already assign, more scaffolding to larger projects.  We can turn big projects into multi-step projects, especially if we stop defining “drafts” as completed essays and use drafts to check just one part of the project – the thesis, a synthesis of a source, body paragraphs without introductions or conclusions.  These take less time for an instructor to check and present students with more frequent interactions at points where that feedback can still affect change in the final product. Of course, our interactions must also be substantive, which simply means that we need to provide our students with actionable feedback.  Telling them what is right or wrong with their work simply isn’t enough for students.  Our feedback needs to direct students to the tools they need to build their skills.  This can take the form of links to relevant textbook sections, interactive grammar tutorials, or even links to extra mini-lectures designed by the instructor. Sometimes, it’s not enough to lead the horse to water, we really do need to show them how to drink. None of these concepts are new.  They’re already available to us and many of us use them in our online and traditional classes already.  New calls to document RSI shouldn’t be seen as additional work but as a way to highlight what we already do well and to reassess whether the way we offer feedback invites conversation or simply justifies our grades.          ... View more

I use Achieve in two of my classes at North Shore Community College: an ALP (Accelerated Learning Program) course and a 6-credit integrated reading and writing course.  When I was first new to the product, I went with the pre-built course and it made my life much easier!  I had to tweak it slightly to fit my courses, but I felt like it was much less stressful than starting from scratch. In subsequent semesters, I’ve experimented with building out the course on my own, but my course tends to mimic the pre-built one! I choose to use the diagnostic tests with both courses, as well as the low-stakes short writing assignments. And in Composition/Seminar (our ALP), I use the writing projects connected to The Hub textbook. One of the most important things I learned with Achieve is that I don’t have to use every tool and option. I got very excited—and stressed out—at first when I saw what is available to instructors and I wanted to use it all! I quickly realized that I should have scaled it back for the first semester because I simply could not keep up with it all. Within writing projects, having three drafts for every essay meant I was constantly reading and grading. Instead, I cut back on the drafts and issued only one or two draft goals so that I wasn’t reading an entire essay each time. I also spread the diagnostic tests out over five weeks, so students don’t just feel like Achieve is one big test!  I also give my students the entire semester to compete any study plans associated with those diagnostics. I use a labor-based grading system in both classes so the Achieve assignments are graded according to whether they are complete, incomplete, late or missing. The gradebook in Achieve helps a lot with that—I can quickly see which students are completing things and which are not…and then I can take a deeper dive into their individual assignments.  Achieve assignments comprise about 50% of the work in my Integrated Reading and Writing course, whereas in my Composition/Seminar (our version of ALP), I use Achieve and The Hub to make up 100% of the assignments. I do a soft integration with my LMS Blackboard.  Since I use labor-based grading, I don’t weight my grades.  I don’t do a full integration with a linked gradebook because of this.   ... View more

OCTOBER 14 | 1:00 PM ET In the classroom, teachers not only confer students with knowledge of their academic course material, but they can also be part of students’ progress toward adulthood. “Adulting” skills are not often taught in the college classroom, yet many of us professors expect students to know how to do these tasks while in our course: study, work independently, send appropriate communication, meet deadlines and more. Soft skills tend to be wielded by successful students and lacking in ones who struggle. Luckily these skills can be taught and nurtured. Professors can use tools such as Achieve’s Self Reflection Surveys to help students develop these soft skills. This webinar will discuss how to incorporate and evaluate student self-reflection surveys to bridge the knowledge gap, improve student learning outcomes, as well as enhance students’ “adulting" skills.   Access the recording today! Watch Recording *NOTE: You must follow this link to register. Responding above as "going" will not register you for this event. ... View more

OCTOBER 13 | 1:00 PM ET Taken from the title of his latest book, Normal Sucks is a deeply personal and professional roadmap for teaching and learning for students who don’t fit the definition of academically normal students. Jonathan’s talk will be accompanied by a 5 minute demonstration of Achieve’s reporting and insights which are designed to help you monitor the performance of your entire class in real time.     Access the recording today! Watch Recording *NOTE: You must follow this link to register. Responding above as "going" will not register you for this event. ... View more

SEPTEMBER 28 | 1:00 PM ET Research has shown that students often learn best from other students. In this session, Kiandra Johnson will demonstrate how she uses remote response (in her case, iClicker) to facilitate just-in-time learning. This empowers students to be interactive, learn from one another, and get the benefit of students explaining concepts as a regular part of her class time.     Access the recording today! Watch Recording ... View more

How do you keep students from cheating on homework? This is an age old question that isn’t tied to using online homework. Back in the day, students would pay other people to do their pencil and paper homework. Now, they can do the same thing online--but with a wider pool of people willing to "help". So how can you as an instructor combat cheating, so that your homework scores follow the same general patterns as your test scores?  Here are a few ideas from users: A Weekly Homework Assignment Worth 0 Points Erika Martinez, an economics professor at University of South Florida, has a variety of assignments for students, including watching videos, completing the LearningCurve adaptive quizzes, and having the students complete worksheets (or do in-class activities). All of this work is for points, but very few points. Then she has a weekly homework assignment (which is essentially considered the summation of everything learned that week) that is worth 0 points. She tracks the students who complete the assignments, but they don’t get credit for the completion as part of their overall grade. (They do get flagged by Prof. Martinez if they are not doing the work as no points doesn’t mean optional!) Then she has the students complete weekly quizzes (for points) as well as 2 bigger tests and a final. In this way, students come to see the homework as practice and self-assessment, not as a reason to cheat.  Deduct Small Points Each Attempt Amanda Norbutus, a chemistry professor at Valencia College explains that while she is willing for students to have multiple attempts at a problem, she has Achieve deduct small points each attempt (5%), so a student has to actively work to solve the problem effectively.  With this method, students are more actively mentally engaged with doing the work, and develop better problem-solving skills that serve them well in high-stress situations like a quiz or exam.  She theorizes that the lack of any penalty makes it too easy for students to “throw a handful of pasta at the ceiling to see what sticks,” without needing the student to critically think of how to approach a problem and culling through their knowledge to find a working solution/approach. Get Creative with the Assignment Dr. Norbutus also suggests making sure the homework assigned has a range of easy, medium, and hard skill level questions, as exposing students only to easy and medium-level questions is a disservice to them in building their skill set for solving problems quickly and efficiently. Professors could also use more problem-solving worksheets or practice assignments either in class or as part of bonus work.  If for bonus, make sure they are tiered problems, where the problem requires the use of more than one skill or concept. Finally, have the teacher select one handwritten problem for students to solve and submit with work shown per HW assignment. This can quickly identify where students may have a disconnect between high scoring Achieve assignments and low scoring quizzes and exams. Use Homework Questions During the Lecture Kiandra Johnson, a mathematics professor at Spelman College, suggested two simple, easy, and effective ideas. Use clicker questions during the lecture as many of the clicker questions are concept-based and cannot be entered into a mathematical database. This is a way to check individual student understanding outside of the homework. Additionally, use  a few problems directly from the homework on the test, and analyze the difference between how students performed on those same problems in homework form vs. on the test.  Other Advice to Prevent Cheating A few instructors mentioned versions of this as well, “We’ve tried to emphasize the importance of the assignments with lots of explanations about why we create these assignments and how they can improve understanding (and grades!) but also try to weight those assignments low enough in the grade to de-incentivize cheating."  We hope this tips help you as you work to navigate an increasingly digital world with your students.  (A note from Macmillan here:  If you do think that you are seeing some of our problems appearing on other sites, with answers, please report these to our piracy team so we can continue to work to maintain the integrity of our content.  Thank you! ) ... View more

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