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

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 Customer Support and they won't use you. (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