When creating a new course in Achieve, you will often be presented with the option to start with a pre-built course or browse resources. Each of these options has pros and cons, which we will describe below. The help articles listed below will also give you some insight into next steps once you have decided whether to start with a pre-built course. Start with a Pre-built course Add resources to your course   Pre-built courses Pre-built courses: Are a great starting point for beginner instructors who would like a default approach to organizing their course Are organized into units according to the text on which your course is based Have a wide variety of curated resources already added to the course based on what is typically used or recommended Have even more resources available to add from the Content Library if you'd like to supplement what comes with the pre-built course The items in a pre-built course are already added to your course and do not need to be added from the Content Library, but you can always remove them or add more. You can choose from the items added to your course which ones you would like to assign with a due date and points. Bulk assigning may be more difficult in a pre-built course If you would like to assign items in bulk in a pre-built course, you will have to find each of the items in the course and check the box for it. In some cases, it may be easier to find and select resources to assign in bulk when browsing resources in the Content Library because it has a search feature. However, if the item is already added to your course (as many will be when using a pre-built course), you will not be able to assign it in bulk using the Content Library. The checkboxes will be greyed out and not allow you to select the item for bulk assigning.   If you choose to Browse Our Library Of Content rather than Start With A Pre-Built Course, you will no longer have the option to use the pre-built course. Make sure this is the option you want before you select it. (If you choose not to use the pre-built course and later decide you'd like to try it, you can do so only if you create a new course.) Browsing resources rather than using a pre-built course allows you to: Search for and add only specific resources to your course (You can type in a term to search for, or filter items by Chapter/Topic, Resource Type, or Recommended Use) Easily create your own units and course organization as you add items to your course Easily assign items or change their visibility as you add them to your course If you're not sure, start with a pre-built course A pre-built course gives you a starting point to work from when building your course. You can still add resources or remove any you don't like. You can also add or remove units and reorganize resources in the pre-built course. The only drawback of using a pre-built course is that it may be more cumbersome to assign items in bulk or organize items in your course, since you can't do it as part of the process of adding them. ... View more

Now that you've figured out your Achieve course delivery method, you need to determine how you want to manager you sections. A Section Manager with sections is the easiest way to manage the content of multiple sections from one place-- the Section Manager. It’s also the easiest way to manage course sections of the same course taught by multiple different TAs/instructors. However, Section Managers do have certain limitations. In Achieve, you can create course sections under a Section Manager. All of the sections are copies of the Section Manager course, and depending on settings you choose, they may inherit changes from the Section Manager.  How does a Section Manager work? Section Managers do not allow the following actions. These actions would instead be taken in each course section. Enrolling students Viewing assignment scores or completion information in the assignment list, gradebook, and reports Creating due date exceptions or student-specific assignments Creating groups of students Performing LMS integration How do the sections work? The course sections under the Section Manager have two different permission sets: Restricted Access and Full Access. In general, Restricted Access is used when you want changes in the Section Manager to flow down into the sections. Restricted Access instructors have limitations on the changes they can make within the course, while Full Access instructors have complete control over the content. The differences between these section types will be covered in more and more detail throughout this article. Is a Section Manager with sections the right set up for me? A Section Manager with sections is the easiest way to manage the content of multiple sections from one place-- the Section Manager. It’s also the easiest way to manage course sections of the same course taught by multiple different TAs/instructors. However, Section Managers do have certain limitations. You will not be able to integrate your Section Manager with an LMS or enroll students in it. You will only be able to set up integration with the section courses under the Section Manager once those have been created. You will not be able to customize the name, course code, or course start/end dates for each section. This information will be inherited from the Section Manager. You will not be able to edit Diagnostic activities once sections are created. The alternative to creating a Section Manager with sections would be to create copies of a single course (not tied to a Section Manager). Functionally, this is almost exactly the same as creating Full Access sections. The only benefit of creating single course copies is that they can have unique course names and start/end dates, while Full Access sections can only inherit this information from the Section Manager. There are also drawbacks to using single course copies. A course coordinator can quickly add an instructor or TA to a Full Access section, but this is not possible for a single course copy. This would have to be done through Macmillan Learning Customer Support. Also, this setup only allows you to add content items you create to a single course, rather than all of your sections. See the table below for further comparison. Comparison of section/course types Below is a table with a brief comparison of the different section types under a Section Manager (Restricted Access and Full Access) vs. course copies that are not tied to a Section Manager. We'll cover the differences between Restricted and Full Access sections in more detail later in this article.     Restricted Access section Full Access section Course Copy (not tied to a Section Manager) Who controls how content is organized in the section course? Section Manager instructor Full Access section instructor Course Copy instructor Who controls who has instructor access to the section courses? Section Manager instructor Section Manager instructor Macmillan Customer Support Can I customize the course info such as the course name, course code, start and end dates? No, it’s inherited from the Section Manager No, it’s inherited from the Section Manager Yes Newly created Files and Links from the Section Manager are automatically added to the section course Yes Yes No, but you can add these manually Newly created Assessments and Writing assignments from the Section Manager are automatically added to the section course Yes Yes No, you can only add these to one course Receives changes to the content of Assessments from the Section Manager Yes No No Receives changes to the content of Writing Assignments from the Section Manager Yes No No Receives changes to the Target Score and Topics for LearningCurve Adaptive Quizzes and Read & Practice assignments from the Section Manager Yes No* No Receives changes to Diagnostic assignments from the Section Manager No No No Receives changes to the content of the course from the Section Manager Yes No No Section instructor can change the content in the section course or assignments No Yes Yes Section instructor can change assignment settings such as due date and points Yes Yes Yes *Full Access sections will receive changes to LearningCurve Adaptive Quizzes and Read & Practice assignments from the section manager only if the assignment has never been opened in that Full Access section. For more instructions, go here to create a Section Manager and see how to manage those sections as well. (And, as always, talk to your local representative, specialist, or sign up for a training if you want more information about how these choices apply to you and your course goals.)   ... View more

Now that you've decided to use Achieve, you need to determine how to set up your Achieve course to align with your course goals. Some topics that you need to think about, for instance, might be: Does your school offer a First Day or Inclusive Access program that you should participate in? Are you required to use your LMS? If so, should you offer Achieve through your LMS (be that Canvas, Blackboard, D2L/Brightspace or Moodle)?  If you are teaching more than one section of the same course, or managing a course with multiple sections and instructors, should you use the Section Manager feature where you create a course and have all sections use a copy or branch of that course?  Once you get into the content of Achieve, do you want to use a pre-built course or start from scratch with our resources to design your own course? Which resources make the most sense to use and assign?  How do you want to set up your assignments and grading policies? Will you give students multiple attempts or a grace period to get work done? How much is the work in Achieve going to count toward the overall course grade?  I wish I could tell you that deciding to use Achieve was the LAST step in the process, but really, you're only just getting started. A series of articles will follow on some of these topics to help you figure out what course design makes the most sense for you, your course goals, and your students. Stay tuned!    ... View more

When we were doing research to develop Achieve, both students and instructors told us that they needed more than just discipline content; they needed tools to help students be great students, regardless of the course content. A student’s ability to adapt problem-solving behaviors to different academic tasks and feedback is critical for successful learning. This ability, also referred to as self-regulated learning, has been defined as a set of interrelated skills and motivations that control learning [1, 2]. In order to better support students’ self-regulated learning, we’ve created the Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys in Achieve.    If the surveys are in your course, you will find them under the Resources tab. Instructors report that they are easy to assign and easy for students to complete and, most shockingly, students LIKE the surveys!    When asked how they felt about the Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys, students said….   “It shows that there is a lot more room for improvement not just in psych, but also other classes.” “The questions in the survey helped me to reflect on what I did to better myself and encouraged me to improve further.” “The surveys helped me to reevaluate my goals and ensure I was on the right track for this class to get the grade I desire.” “The surveys helped me better look at how I studied and participated in class. It gave me better study habit ideas.”   Not only do students like the surveys, but our data suggests that using Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys impacts student course performance.   Students that complete their surveys experience higher final course grades Students completing up to 2 surveys perform 2 - 3% better on their course grade than their peers not completing surveys.  Students completing 3 - 5 surveys perform up to 5.5% better on their course grade than their peers not completing surveys.   Students that complete their surveys also perform better on internal Achieve assignments like practice quizzes and homework (Ranking 8% - 12% higher in their classes than their peers not completing surveys)       AND….  Students completing their surveys also complete up to 36% more of their assigned Achieve activities.      But it’s not just about the students. What do instructors say they learn from the surveys and the reports?   “It helped me understand how each student is doing and where we need more work.”    “The report was valuable to me as it revealed students' level of interest in the course, what they seek from the course and how they will apply the outcomes of the course to their lives. I truly used all parts of the information included in the report.”    “It's interesting and helpful to see the number of students who report being off track. It's also helpful to see what obstacles they report facing to staying on track and the strategies they intend on using moving forward.”   “It provided good insight about where many of the students can use some additional instruction and resources to boost learning.”   How many of the surveys are instructors assigning? For courses that assign only 1 survey, only 38% of students complete the survey. Courses that assign 2 - 3 surveys experience more than twice the number of students completing the surveys (77 - 82%). Courses that assign 4 or more surveys experience a significant drop in student survey completion rates (47% or less)   What does this mean for us? There is a sweet spot of using/assigning the Goal-setting & Reflection Surveys.  We recommend instructors assign 2 - 3 surveys per semester for maximum student engagement.   If you want to learn more about the surveys, check out our introduction to surveys article.  [1] Zimmerman, B. J., & Schunk, D. H. (Eds.). (2001). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theoretical Perspectives. Routledge.    [2] Broadbent, J., & Poon, W. L. (2015). Self-regulated learning strategies & academic achievement in online higher education learning environments: A systematic review. The Internet and Higher Education, 27, 1-13. ... View more

What’s New? We have a few new features that just released that will be, we hope, inordinately helpful for your 2022 classes.  You can learn more in our Community.    The instructor can pick the day of the week that the assignment view begins for all of their students in that class.   Achieve will remember the last My Course view any user was on and show that view when you return to My Course.   Instructors will be able to delete their unwanted custom assessment grade settings policies.   Instructors will have new options to control solution visibility.   Password protected assessments are now available.     Learning Objectives will now be visible to instructors when building or editing their assessments, as well as when reviewing students' responses. (Not in Essentials or Read & Practice courses)     Goal Setting and Reflection Responses will now be automated and available in the Reports / Insights tab.   A simple calendar view is available now with enhancements expected throughout the spring.      What came out earlier this fall?  Multi-take Assessments (as a new option as a Grade Settings Policy) allow students to take an assessment up to five times and keep the highest score.  Group Exceptions allow you to create a group of students to use for exceptions (like time extensions) repeatedly.  Course Start and End Time and Institution Name are part of the Course Details and give you the power over exactly when your course starts and ends, and what students see about your course.        ... View more

Just a reminder that we will be doing maintenance on LaunchPad and our catalogs on Sunday, November 14th from 12:01am (just after midnight) until 7am EST (7 hours). During that time, no one (students or instructors) will be able to access LaunchPad or the catalogs, so please make any adjustments to your syllabus now. A notice will appear in LaunchPad as well, but please be sure to remind your students about this downtime just in case they skip that notice and plan on doing work at 4am on a Sunday morning. 🙂  Thanks for your patience with us!  ... View more

We have officially released "multi-take" as a grading setting in Achieve. Check it out!  (And yes, the team has already updated the KB with info on multi-take, if you're interested.)  Multi-Take Quiz Grading Setting Details on Multi-Take Quizzes                ... 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

 Learn More Today! https://go.macmillanlearning.com/black-history-black-stories-2021.html ... View more

What we have learned with Achieve: it is less about how many assignments, and more about the engagement with the assignments as planned.   Over four semesters (F19-S20-F20-S21), we worked with 4419 students engaging with more than half a million unique assignments from 149 courses across 6 subjects. We collected a lot of data from those studies (that we are digging into further with more studies in subsequent semesters), and here’s what we have found so far: What did we see helping student performance for students using Achieve? Students using more of their courses’ assignments and having higher grades on those assignments, had higher exam scores. Students with higher grades on their assignments (gradebook average) could expect to be 9 points higher on exams. Students that use less than the typical student, by course, can expect to perform 4% to 8% lower on their exams, while students that use more than the typical, perform 1.5% higher on their exams.     What did not help student performance? Neither the overall number of assignments for each course nor the percent of these assignments that were graded had an impact. The  overall number of assignments engaged by the student nor the raw number of graded assignments had an impact. Simply adding additional assignments does not appear to help course performance. In short, it is less about how many assignments, and more about the engagement with the assignments as planned.   Recommendations for customers: Allow and encourage students to engage and persist more, maybe even collaborate. Some assignments should be graded and tracked (e.g., check for understanding, formative and benchmark assessment). You do not necessarily need to assign more or increase the load on students. ... 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

iClicker Engagement Sweepstakes Grant Giveaway for Teachers Enter to win a $500 technology grant for your department or classroom! The past year has made one thing crystal clear: engagement is vital to student success. Learning Science research shows that creating connections inside and outside of the classroom with iClicker not only helps every student - regardless of preparedness - thrive in class, but actually boosts end-of-course grades too!  So, every month this fall, we’ll be drawing for a chance for an instructor to win a $500 educational technology grant for their department! How to Enter & Qualify for the Grant: To enter, all instructors need to do is use iClicker at least 3 times in a calendar month with at least 5 students — then submit a screenshot of your iClicker course history.  Ready to go?  Learn more about how to enter, rules, & deadlines here: https://go.macmillanlearning.com/engage-to-achieve-sweepstakes (This contest is open to anyone using iClicker, whether that's integrated with LaunchPad or Achieve, or by itself. We'd love to have you!)  What would you do with a $500 technology grant for your classroom?  ... View more

This fall, we are hosting a variety of webinars designed to Engage Your Students to Achieve More. Topics include: Go here to register today! (And if you can't attend, registering will give you access to any post-event recordings or documentation.) We hope to see you this fall!  ... View more