How do I want to assess my students' competencies and monitor their progress in my course? Such a question can lead an educator to consider the means by which they gather data or measure the retention of concepts and material during the duration of their course. One way to do this is through a traditional form of assessment: quizzing or testing. In LaunchPad, there is the option to construct and edit this kind of assessment. Being different than another LaunchPad feature, the adaptive quizzing feature called LearningCurve, the more traditional quizzes in LaunchPad are, by default, listed at the end of each chapter and module. These summative and timed quizzes are aimed at testing the student over the material that was just covered in the chapter or module. They tend to be concise, having less than ten questions for the students to answer.  However, the quizzing feature in LaunchPad is also highly customizable, which means that if you want to give a large assessment, like a midterm or final test, you have the option to do just that. Below, you will see that, as I indicated earlier, by default the quiz comes at the end of the chapter. In instructor view, let's click on it and see what comes up.  Selecting the "Chapter 1 Quiz" row from the LaunchPad home screen will bring up the window below. If you follow the yellow arrow, I have circled where you can go in and edit. In the past, I have found it helpful to start with the publisher's default content, which gives me a template from which to begin, and then go in and tweak or make the changes I need to in order to fit the class.  Apart from just the edit button, you may also want to pay attention to the way that each of the pools of questions listed below are grouped together topically and randomized. This, of course, is more rigorous pedagogically insofar as it reduces or eliminates any sharing of the answers. But, for our purposes, let's click on the edit button... Doing so shows more details and gives us more options. For example, you can rearrange the order of the question pools, you can delete a pool, or you can edit that particular group of questions - see the yellow bracket. The new options that are available include creating new questions, showing feedback, importing questions, displaying the question pools, and collapsing the details of each pool. Clicking on "Create New Question" will give you the option to build your own quiz. In the yellow box below, you will find that click on "Create New Question" give you several options of the specific kind of question you want to create. While I haven't gone into more detail or shown the interface where you actually do create the questions, it is very similar to other tools you probably have used in the past to build online assessments. Suffice it to say, LaunchPad has a lot of deep or advanced features that I think are best learned through exploring or messing around with - in a test or dummy course similar to the one I have been using for this blog post.  Another feature I have used in the past, and I am sure many instructors would use as well (especially if you have taught from an older online platform), is the "Import Questions" option, to the right of the yellow box and listed in blue. Once you click on that, the following dialogue box appears. Some of you may be familiar with the formula it offers on how to import questions. That is, follow this template in a word processing program to get the correct formatting so that LaunchPad will recognized and place the information in the right way. My sense is that this formatting is pretty standard. So, some of your old test banks that you designed maybe for a more dated system should upload correctly (or just minor tweaks are required).  Finally, I wanted to show you that you may also search the entire database of publisher provided questions using various filters and keywords. This is great because it allows you to quickly sort and organize all of the test and quiz questions that are uploaded into LaunchPad.  Below is an example where I searched for the term "Watson" - an early behaviorist in the psychology profession. You can see that the system lists all of the questions, regardless of chapter or module, that contain the word "Watson" - allowing you to select ones that you may want to add to a quiz. In summary, I tried to give you a taste of how LaunchPad handles the construction of traditional, timed quizzing and testing. Hopefully, you have a better understanding of how to use the publisher's content as a springboard to customize and build your own quizzes, even how to upload quizzes and test banks the you may have used in the past. ... View more

The first thing that your students will see when they sign onto LaunchPad is the "Welcome Page." The default settings automatically include a couple widgets: an RSS feed from Scientific American and a list of upcoming assignments that are due. However, there are many ways that you can customize this page to fit your teaching style.  In this post, I am hoping to show you how I have used the "Welcome Page" in my courses. This demonstration will aid you in both learning about ways to customize LaunchPad as well as give you some pedagogical tips that could be incorporated into your own teaching style and LaunchPad courses.  You will notice, below, that when you are in instructor view you have the ability to edit the "Welcome Page." Following the yellow arrow and clicking on the "Edit Page" button will bring up the edit screen. The edit screen, featured in the screen capture below, lets you do several things. For example, you can rearrange the different widgets to different spaces on the page, you can add a new widget, and you can delete a widget. You may also notice that the two widgets that are enabled by default are an RSS feed for Scientific American and a list of the upcoming assignments that are due.  Let's say that we want to add a new widget. To do this, you would click on one of the empty yellow boxes or where it says add new widget.  Once you do this, the following gray box will appear - I have circled it in yellow. You have a few options here of what you can do. You can, of course, add or re-add an RSS feed from Scientific America, add your own custom RSS feed, add or re-add the upcoming assignment widget, and, finally, you can create your own. As a tip, in the past, I have had students use the Scientific America RSS feed to write a one page article that summarize some of the current research coming out of the psychology field. As an educator, I think it is important to stay as up-to-date as possible on the current literature and latest developments within the field. And, as a result, having this continually updated feed on the home page is a nice resource to utilize if you want to have students engage with current research in this manner.  To give you a concrete example, let's click on "Create Your Own." This will bring up a dialogue box that looks similar to an HTML page you can create within the module and chapter system of LaunchPad. This is great because it allows you to edit and customize the widget pretty extensively. Below is an example of how I have used this to create my own widget on the "Welcome Page." A lot of time, I have found it helpful, especially when teaching a fully online course, to post a class wide, at least weekly, update about the upcoming material that may also include technical and logistical notes. You can do this on the "Welcome Page" and students will see this every time they sign onto LaunchPad.  Posting a weekly update on the "Welcome Page" is one way I have used this LaunchPad feature in my courses. Also, as I have indicated, the Scientific American RSS feed is great if you are trying to help students stay on top of the most recent research and literature coming out of your discipline.  Overall, I hope that I have been able to give you some ideas about ways to customize the "Welcome Page" in LaunchPad and, in addition, given you some ideas about how to incorporate it into your own teaching style. ... View more

Customizing the content in your LaunchPad course is the first step toward making it uniquely yours. For this blog post, I want to show you how to do precisely this. I will first walk you through the different kinds of assignments and features that can be added to LaunchPad while also providing a few personal anecdotes from my own experiences teaching. Then, I am going to show you one of the customizable features that I use most often: "Document Collection". By adding this to your course, you will be able to attach virtually any file format (for example, PDF or a PowerPoint file) so that it is accessible and downloadable by your students. To begin, you will see below that I have highlighted the "Add New" button that appears in the home screen in LaunchPad. Click on this to access the customizable content window. Once selected, a window with eleven different options appears. I am going to briefly walk you through each of these. You may also be able to read the description that LaunchPad provides in the window as well.  The "Unit" selection is generally used as a kind of module placeholder for other content. In other words, it will help you build and structure your course. Use this if you want to create a unique module on the LaunchPad homepage. I typically select this to advertise extra credit opportunities or to post a large assignment like a final research paper. Next is the "Discussion Board" option. Be sure to check out my other blog post that goes into more detail about this feature: Using Discussion Boards in LaunchPad.  But, again, this is an excellent way to integrate your course fully into a single LMS platform - this is something that I have done and found it very convenient and helpful.  Third on the list is "Document Collection" which is something that I am going to go into a lot more detail later on in this blog post. As a result, I won't say too much right now other than this will allow you to upload and make accessible various kinds of documents to your course. You will also be able to type on an HTML page and include instructions or other kinds of content like URL links. Speaking of links, the next option will let you post a URL exclusively by itself. This can be helpful if you want to give students quick and direct access to a certain webpage or online resources. This would be opposed to having them click into a HTML page and then selecting the link from within the text. In general, this is a pretty standard and straightforward feature. The "Homework" content is somewhat of a new feature to LaunchPad. It will allow you to provide a very customizable experience for the student by bringing together and interlinking eBook content, APA or other professional standards and learning objectives, and quiz questions over chapter or lecture material. I would recommend creating a test course, like I have done here, and playing around with this one as there are many ways in which it can be deployed in your course. Next, the "HTML Page" is a pretty standard feature on other LMS platforms and other university content delivery systems. In it, you can edit a page much like you can a word processor page. I have found that this is helpful if I want to provide quick instructions to students or include a link with some context around it.  The "Offline Assignment" option is great if you are teaching a hybrid course, both online and in person. For example, if you give a large exam or assign a big research paper in the brick-and-mortar classroom, then you can use this to provide an entry in the gradebook in LaunchPad. This way, the students will be able to view current and up-to-date grades even though the assignment was not provided through LaunchPad.  "Link Collection" that is pictured below, is a hybrid between the "Link" and "HTML Page" features. It is pretty straightforward in that you will be able to edit an HTML page and attach, in a separate way, a URL link. By selecting "Quiz", you will be prompted to create your own quiz questions or select them from the pre-established test bank. I am sure you are familiar with at least a similar feature if you have any experience with teaching online. An analogous logic applies in LaunchPad, allowing you to develop your own form of timed quizzing (or you can use the built-in adaptive quizzing found in LearningCurve). Using the "Video Assignment" feature is great if you want to upload your own media lectures to the course thereby making it much more personable and, perhaps, more pedagogically effective. You don't have to be super proficient in internet and video technology in order to do this. For example, you may embed a YouTube video you record right on the site or you may upload, for instance, a .mpg or .mpeg file recorded on your computer.  Finally, the "Dropbox" gives you a place to let students submit any kind of document - whether that be a final paper, research proposal, or weekly journal reflection. This will also create an entry in gradebook where you can render a grade for the document; furthermore, allowing you to provide personalized feedback to individual students.  In the last part of this blog post, I will take a more detailed look at the "Document Collection" feature largely because I use it so extensively and I would guess, by extension, that other instructors do as well.  Below is the screen that will appear after having selected it from the original menu (above). You will notice that there is an option for you to select "Attach a Document".  Once you click on this, a prompt will show-up for you to browse for the file you want to upload. Again, the file type is really irrelevant, since the system can handle anything from a PDF file to a PowerPoint slideshow or a Word document.  I have selected a PDF file. You can also see that the "Description" box acts as basically an HTML page where you can provide context for the file or instructions on what the students are supposed to do with the attached document.  This last screen shot is virtually the same screen that the students will see. You will notice that I have highlighted how the uploaded document appears giving the students the option to download it.  I hope that this outline of customizable content in LaunchPad has been helpful in giving you an overview of the ways in which you can add your own material into the system or, at least, riff off of the default assignments that are already provided.  I have found LaunchPad to be extremely user-friendly when I have attempted to incorporate my own documents and brick-and-mortar assignments into an online platform. By extension, I think that the students, as well, have appreciated how seamless and efficient it is to have mid-semester content (like an extra credit assignment) appear within the user interface.   ... View more

Why not include all of your grading and student evaluation in the same place? That's what the "Gradebook" in LaunchPad is specifically designed to do. In this blog post, I will walk you through some of the key features of the "Gradebook" page in LaunchPad as well as describe my own experience using it for my courses - things that I have found helpful or ways in which I let it inform my teaching.  On the main screen, you will notice under the menu column on the left-hand side, there is a button named "Gradebook" - clicking on this will take you to a table that lists the current scores for every student in your course.  The below screenshot is what appears after clicking the "Gradebook" button. In this course, you may notice that I have left the display options set to their default settings. As an alternative, you may tell LaunchPad to order the grades by highest to lowest overall score, the amount of time students are logged into the system, or other factors of your choosing. In the furthest left column, this is the current total grade for the particular (redacted) student in the course. This is nice because it gives me, the instructor, as well as the student a convenient place to view the progress in the course - without having to calculate anything. You may also notice the import and export scores options in the row towards the top. This is an excellent feature if you are required by your institution to keep a copy of your grading in their own LMS platform as well. By clicking on a specific student name, you will be taken to a screen that provides more details germane to that student. This allows you to make changes to that student's grades - for example, you may alter the points for that exact assignment, give the student an exemption, or provide individual feedback. In order to do this, you will need to click on the specific assignment you want to access. See the below yellow arrow and circle as an example.  Once selected, the options highlighted in the following screenshot come up. Again, you will notice how the system allows you to provide two forms of feedback - one that is viewable to the student and one that is only accessible by the instructor. This screen will also allow you to see the specific items within the assignment that the student completed, either correctly or incorrectly. The yellow circle below indicates the place where you can add feedback to the content after or before the student completes it. In order to help you evaluate the class in a way that is more fair, LaunchPad also provides several statistical analyses. This has helped me in terms of receiving feedback on specific assignments that may have been too challenging or the concepts within the assignment may not have been explained by me as well as they could have been. As a result, this sometimes leads me to alter the point structure and curve of that specific evaluation. By clicking on "Class Statistics" you will receive statistical feedback. You will find, below, that LaunchPad represents that data in graph form making it easy to visualize the distribution of scores. This is presented with the numerical analysis adjacent to and below the graphic outputs. The "Gradebook" gives you, as an instructor, the option to see this kind of data as per each individual assignment or, in a more macro sense, for an entire student. There are so many 'deep features' that I was not able to talk about in this post that the "Gradebook" allows you to do. In my experience, it is helpful to just get in there and play around with the different options, perhaps in a dummy or test course. This lets you change options and settings without having to worry about it effecting the grade of the students you may be currently evaluating. Furthermore, by migrating all of your evaluating to the "Gradebook" in LaunchPad, it gives both you and the students a convenient and accessible place by which to access and monitor progress in the course. "Gradebook" in LaunchPad is comparable, if not more so, to evaluation tools found in other LMS platforms and systems. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to store my evaluation data solely within the LaunchPad system - and I know the students appreciate the ease of this, too! ... View more

When I first started working with LaunchPad, I took one look at that Instructor’s console and shivered. “What could possibly be in there that I would need?” I thought to myself. I didn’t exactly vow to never open it, but I certainly avoided it. My energy was turned toward populating the course I was scheduled to teach. As a result, I knew what I wanted to do with LaunchPad, but I was unable to make it work within the grade book. I became frustrated. Assignments were not in the order I wanted them; there had to be a way to organize the grade book to suit my need for order. Knowing that the current line-up was not what I had envisioned, the second semester I decided to populate Launchpad by simply putting in each assignment as it appeared on my syllabus. For certain, I thought, anyway, that this way my assignments would be in date order. In other words, I opted to follow the schedule on my syllabus to populate LaunchPad. This method worked a little bit better, and I found myself not needing to rearrange my grade book--or wishing I could. However, as I insert new assignments, the same problem arose: the assignments would be out of order. I finally got brave. Enter the instructor console. I overcame my aversion to the console and learned that this little button could help so much. The general navigation and Launchpad settings is pretty self-explanatory. Click on that and the title of the course can be changed as well as what timezone the class is located, which is important because I teach in two different time zones, Hawaii and the Pacific Time Zone. From here, I can arrange the home page on LaunchPad. Since many of my students were requesting to have the most recent assignment on top of the screen rather than sorted by the default settings in LaunchPad, I discovered that I could change this section to suit their needs. The batch due date update is really important if you're going to be teaching the same class the following semester. In this place you can easily plug in the previous semester’s start and end date, the new start date, and all of the assignments will fall into line (assuming, of course, that you’ve copied your previous course instead of starting fresh). In other words, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. All of the due dates will be adjusted accordingly. The only downfall to this is if you are changing your syllabus for the coming semester, keeping some items and eliminating others. If that's the case, it appears as if your new assignments will be out of order from the previously included assignments, but that is simply not the case. There is a place to go to reorder all of your assignments to accommodate changes in the syllabus.     The grade book preferences really is the Holy Grail of the instructor console. In this spot, you can easily put in the percentage for passing the class (even though the universities I work for state that 60% is passing, I put it as 70% so that the students strive for that “C” grade), ask LaunchPad to put in zero grades for any assignment that has not been completed on time, and re-arrange each of your assignments so that they line up according to your syllabus and sensibilities. A word of caution here with respect to the automatic “0” grades: if you have assignments to be graded manually, on the day after the manual assignment is collected, “0” grades go through. My students didn’t panic here--I told them what was going on, and they seemed to accept it as if it were a part of daily life. To re-order the assignments, click on the blue “Show Assignments” toggle. There, your categories will appear. You can then open up the categories to show everything that is contained under each category. You can not only re-number the categories here, but you can also re-number the assignments within each category. You can also remove categories that you may have accidently set up. This is now your customized grade book that reflects your own sensibilities and your own preference for order. One other fast note: You don’t have to go back out to the assignments page to go to another section on the Instructor Console. Just click on the blue button on the top that says, “Instructor Console” and you will arrive back at the main navigation for the Instructor Console. I hope this blog on using the Instructor Console is helpful for everyone! I can assure you that I was frightened of this spot--I didn’t want to break anything. But now that I have figured out how this can help me and make my life easier, I’m happy to share my findings with you! As always, email me if you have questions. My email is jilldahlman@yahoo.com , and I am happy to answer questions, share course materials, or even help you to come up with ideas to make your classroom LaunchPad friendly. ... View more

The discussion board is one of the great features of LaunchPad that is not enabled by default and can sometimes go unnoticed. In this blog post, I hope to show you how to take advantage of this really useful pedagogical tool as well as offer my own insights as an instructor on how I use discussion boards, and what I have found as helpful in the past. Discussion boards are especially essential if you are using LaunchPad for an entirely online course or as your primary LMS platform. By integrating discussion board posts, responses, and feedback directly into the chapter module, the student gets a seamless learning experience being able to click through the content all in the same place. I will assume that you have a basic understanding of how to set-up and log into your LaunchPad (if not, there are excellent tutorial videos and blog posts on this site as well as others). On the main screen, under each chapter or module, you will see a button that says "Add to this Unit" - when you click on it, you will get the option to "Create new..." Clicking on "Create new..." gives you the "Add a new assignment" window. You will notice that I circled in yellow the discussion board option. Once clicking on it, a blank discussion board is added to your chapter or module. If the screenshots are any indication, I tend to place my discussion boards at the end of the chapter or module. There are really two reasons why I do this: First, it makes sense that applied learning should come after the more didactic material presented during the assignments and eBook. This gives the student a chance to show off what they have learned. Second, I have found that by being at the end of the chapter (and being worth 10 points, a large portion of the chapter grade), the student engages more rigorously with the material. I weight my discussion boards in this way in order to encourage original and substantive thinking - stressing that a couple sentences as a response is never going to be sufficient.  Once clicking on what I have labeled as the "Chapter 7 Discussion" the below window will appear in LaunchPad. You will notice that this image is taken from a course that I have taught in developmental psychology. I create my discussion post prompts by scanning for the main themes of the chapter and trying to have the students integrate them with other major topics that we have covered in the past. Here, you will see that I ask them to revisit the nature/nurture debate (discussed in earlier chapters) but this time in terms of autism spectrum disorder. My goal here is to push the students to engage critically with the material - not necessarily taking either the nurture or nature side but being able to cogently argue for each side of the paradigm.  When the posts are expanded, you can see the entire original contribution done by the student as well as the two responses that I require as part of their grading. This is helpful because the students are able to click through and easily see what post has responses, which ones don't, or whose post may be exemplary - garnering several responses or a longer discussion. While the below image is taken from my instructor view, the student sees a very similar layout and user interface.  Strickly accessible to instructors, in the image below, the "Results" button lets the professor grade the posts easily and efficiently. On the main page, you will see the various statistics for this particular discussion post allowing you - if you want - to curve or alter the assignment grading. Or, this can also be useful if you want to see how well the students performed on this assignment thereby perhaps providing feedback regarding the retention of the chapter content or the efficacy of the discussion prompt.   By clicking on the student name (redacted below), you can see where I circled in yellow the quick information that LaunchPad provides about the number of posts the student has completed and their number of replies. This allows me to quickly see if the student has met the criteria of one original post and two replies to their classmates. Furthermore, it brings up all of the students' responses so that I can grade them in one place - as opposed to having to search through all of the posts for this specific student. Not pictured but at the bottom of this screen, there is a place for the instructor to leave direct feedback to a particular student. This is really useful in providing individual instruction to a student that may be struggling with some of the chapter concepts or if you want to address a specific issue with the student's discussion board post; for example, 'you forgot to respond to your classmates' or 'the authoritative parenting style has shown to be most efficacious for healthy development and functioning, not the authoritarian style (see page 211)'. I hope that I have given some useful tips that will help you integrate discussion board assignments into your LaunchPad course! From my past experience, I can for certain say that students really appreciate having all of the assigned content grouped together in one place. Plus, it makes for a more streamlined grading and teaching process. ... View more

As the semester winds down, it’s time to confirm that you have your LaunchPad gradebook set up exactly how you want it to ensure a smooth end to classes. Check your settings, attend to lingering unsubmitted scores, and export your gradebook so you can start summer vacation early! 1. Review the basics. Before you finalize your gradebook, it doesn’t hurt to review the settings to make sure you’re displaying the information you want and that you understand all the data the gradebook is reporting. Did you know you can toggle between student and professor view directly from the gradebook under the “Display Options”? Learn more about gradebook basics here. 2. Enable “Zero Scores For Unsubmitted Assignments.” By default, LaunchPad does NOT automatically give zeroes to students who don’t attempt assignments that are due for points. To set up your course so that students who fail to attempt work are given zeroes, be sure to enable the “Zero Scores For Unsubmitted Assignments” setting in the instructor console. Learn how to turn on the Zero Scores feature here. 3. Manually grade assignments. Some assignments, like those that require written responses, need to be manually assigned a score by the professor. In other instances, instructors may want to change a student’s final score after reviewing their individual circumstances. Both are possible by clicking on the area of the gradebook where a student’s point score is (or would appear) and typing in a new point value. If you’re unsure whether an assignment needs to be manually graded, look for the “paper” icon where a student’s score should be. Learn more about manually scoring assignments here. 4. Drop lowest scores. It’s easy to automatically drop a student’s lowest score(s) in a certain gradebook category. Just go to the Gradebook Preferences in the Instructor Console and edit the “Drop Lowest” number by clicking on it and entering a new number. Be sure to group similar assignment types (like quizzes or homework sets) into the same gradebook category to maximize the utility of this feature. Learn more about dropping lowest scores here. 5. Use weighted gradebook categories. If you like to grade your courses by percentage weights rather than by point distributions (for example, if you want to make homework assignments 20% of a student’s total grade regardless of how many points you make each assignment worth), you can do so by sorting your assignments into gradebook categories and then assigning percentage weights to those categories. Just access those settings in the Gradebook Preferences under the Instructor Console—you’ll need to turn on the “Use Weighted Categories” setting and assign percent values to your categories on the same screen. Learn more about Weighted Gradebook Categories here. 6. Import grades for offline assignments. If you use LaunchPad as your primary gradebook and want to import scores from an offline assignment into the system, use the import feature within the gradebook screen to add scores for tests, essays, clicker questions, and other types of assignments that are completed outside of LaunchPad.t Learn more about importing grades into LaunchPad here. ​ 7. Export your gradebook. When the semester is complete and the gradebook is finalized, the grades can be exported to either a .csv or a .txt file via the gradebook page. Professors can choose which data fields from the gradebook to export, including specific data for each assignment. If you plan to transfer your grades into BlackBoard, Canvas, or D2L, you’ll want to be sure to export them in .csv format. Learn more about exporting grades here. If your gradebook issues aren’t addressed here or you need other end-of-semester assistance, we encourage you to sign up for a training session with one of our Learning Solutions Specialists by going to the Training Center page . Happy grading! ... View more

When we first released LaunchPad, one thing we would always talk about are the 'curated units'. For Macmillan, this means that within each chapter of the book (and ebook), we select or create high quality resources that go with that chapter and appear within the unit structure. Those resources might be LearningCurve quizzes or videos or multi-media activities, depending on the book or LaunchPad in question. With just a few clicks, you can assign all of these resources for the chapter at once, trusting that the curator has done just what you would do in your class. Now that LaunchPad has been out for a while, we know that not everyone wants to use these units. We survey students and instructors at the end of every semester and at the end of the Fall 2015 semester, 35% of instructors told us that they don't use the pre-built units, but rather create their course from scratch. Depending on how your course is organized and which assets you want to use, this makes a lot of sense for some people. So how would you do this? It's very easy! First go to the Instructor Console and then click on General, Navigation, and LaunchPad Settings. Then select LaunchPad from the menu on the left and you will see the option to "Remove these units from your course?" Once the units have been removed, you can then go and create your own units (maybe you organize by week or module or topic, instead of chapter) and then you can go to the resources and add in just the items you want (maybe you just want the ebook and LearningCurve or maybe you just want the video assignments you've created). In this way, you can completely customize the course the way you want to. And don't worry, if you remove those units, you can always add them back in by going back to the same spot and select "Add these units to your course." For more detailed instructions, check out the online user guide or talk to one of our Digital Solutions Specialists to find out which approach makes sense for your course. ... View more

This week I was talking to Brenda Leady, a lovely professor of biology at the University of Toledo. She mentioned that when she first started using LaunchPad, she didn't use LearningCurve. She found the fact that she, a self-admitted control freak, couldn't control the precise topics or number of questions in each LearningCurve assignment to be a negative, so she didn't assign it. She changed her mind, however, when her students told her that they were using and really liking LearningCurve, even though she hadn't assigned it. So now she assigns it, and is very happy with how it is working to prepare students for class. If you use LearningCurve, there is a lovely new (short) video to help your students learn how to use it to help them succeed. Or, to learn more about how Brenda Leady, and others, use LaunchPad, sign up for our Peer-Led Webinars. ... View more

Just a reminder as classes get started and students familiarize themselves with Achieve and Sapling and LaunchPad (and LaunchPad Solo and Writer's Help) that you ARE NOT tech support for your students. Macmillan has a lovely tech support team in Orlando, FL waiting to help your students. The agents are good, nice, and fast--and they have quick answers to lots of the typical problems that students encounter at the beginning of the semester. So encourage your students to use Macmillan Tech Support and they won't use you. They can be contacted via email and phone, once you fill out the support form. (And don't forget that they can help instructors too!) ... View more

Many students will balk at the suggestion of using an online learning system like LaunchPad, even if it has great study tools that will help them to pass their courses. Though LaunchPad is proven to help students in preparing for lectures, reviewing the material, and studying for exams, it can be difficult to imagine the results until you’ve actually had an opportunity to get your hands dirty. A professor’s best friend: the delayed payment option! Giving students 21 days of free access to a course opens up many more opportunities for instructors to demonstrate the efficacy of online materials despite student hesitations. LaunchPad’s temporary access is the solution to many common technology buy-in problems: Activation Code Mistakes. If a student has misplaced their code or is having trouble getting registered for the course, they can activate temporary access and avoid stress at the start of the semester. Waiting On Financial Aid. Students often have to wait to buy books until school funding is processed and distributed. 21 days of free access allows them to keep up with their assignments and use the e-Book in LaunchPad until they can pay for materials. Testing a Digital-Only Approach. LaunchPads that come with an e-Book are a cost-effective way to save money by foregoing a physical textbook for online-only resources. Students can use trial access to see if a digital-only textbook solution works for them or whether they would prefer to buy a textbook and LaunchPad package from the bookstore. Delayed Course Commitment. Trial LaunchPad access is great for students who aren’t sure if they’ll be dropping a class. It allows them to get the full experience of the course by attempting assignments and interacting with the textbook without the financial commitment of acquiring the physical book. Temporary access can make the start of a new semester less stressful for professors and students alike. Students can dive into their new courses without falling behind and professors can enjoy a more prepared and engaged class. ... View more

I'm a Macmillan Learning rep and I really enjoy empowering professors and students with our digital tools. Throughout the LaunchPad implementation process at any institution, I listen to what my professors need, pluck out the core questions, and find the answers. One common question is this: "How do I communicate with my students around LaunchPad in order to make it most effective?" In response, I compiled this document: LaunchPad Tips and Syllabus Snips Final Version.docx  The syllabus was originally crafted by two creative individuals, Professor Toni Henderson and her representative, Jennifer Cawsey. It has been helpful for both current and prospective LaunchPad adopters and I hope it will be helpful for you! ... View more

As we begin 2016, we want to make sure you are all ready for classes. So just a reminder of a few things: If we asked you to make a NEW course for January (not copy), then please be sure to do that. If you copied your course from the fall, make sure you update your assignment due dates before you activate your course. If you need a refresher on LaunchPad, check out our training resources. If you need First Day of Class tools (slides or documents), check out the resources on our FDOC page. If you have any questions, just let us know. And Happy New Year! ... View more

Learning about LaunchPad Ever since we started using an online component with our textbook, I have had the dilemma of how do I show my students all the study options (opportunities) that are available to help them through my course (Biology 1010 – Introductory Biology for Non-majors). It would take an entire class to demonstrate all of the different materials available for them to use. Sadly, that’s time we really didn’t have.  Out of concern for presenting a solid foundation for using LaunchPad, an assignment called “Learning About LaunchPad” was born. The assignment is somewhat like a scavenger hunt, asking the students to travel through all of the different components of LaunchPad and answer questions along the way. They are exposed to the calendar, announcements, the ebook, the animations, Learning Curve, flashcards, the homepage lay-out and more. By the time they finish the assignment, they know where and how to use all the various components LaunchPad has to offer. My colleague and I asked the students to enroll in LaunchPad before the first class and we offer extra credit if they come to class with the “Learning About LaunchPad” assignment completed. This past semester over 90% of my students handed me a completed assignment on the first day! We have even used the assignment to help a new colleague become familiar with all LP has to offer. Did the assignment assist students feeling comfortable with LP, in locating their assignments throughout the semester and using study tools they might otherwise not have tried?  I thinkthey would all give you a resounding yes! The assignment goes with the LaunchPad for Biology for a Changing World (Schuster,2e). I’ve posted the “Spring version” of our assignment.  Feel free to modify it for your own courses. I hope you get the same positive results, we have experienced! ... View more

This spring, we had a contest where we asked students to submit videos via Instagram about LaunchPad. The results were very creative and might make a nice introduction to LaunchPad during the first week of class. Plus, the videos are short! Check out the LaunchPad Instagram Content Winners here. ... View more