Many instructors have adopted online discussion boards as a tool to encourage students to communicate with each other, share ideas, and participate in peer review. It’s also one of the few ways to check in on students to make sure they are actually reading their assigned texts (though the effectiveness of this is debatable). Plenty of students will admit that participating in discussion boards is pretty low on their priorities when juggling multiple courses, campus life, eating, and maybe getting a wink of sleep every now and then. In my experience, these discussions counted for a fairly minute portion of my grade, which translated to me posting first on these discussion boards in order to write something that was articulate but not exactly insightful. Genuine, thoughtful discussion can be beneficial to developing critical thinking skills and challenging students to question both their knowledge and their patterns of thought. This, however, is not something that can be forced.  Creating dynamic discussion online is not an easy task, but if done correctly these discussion boards can become an invaluable resource for students to become both better thinkers and writers.  So this question remains: How can instructors make online discussion more than a perfunctory task? Use Small Groups In some of my best classes, splitting the class into groups of four to six students eliminated the anonymity of posting. With the knowledge that my posts would have a specific audience, I was more likely to actually put effort into my responses and try to give helpful feedback to my peers. Ask Thoughtful Questions                                                                                                                                       This may sound obvious, but I challenge you to examine the prompts that you are giving your students. Are you challenging them to think or guiding them toward a specific response?  Relate Their Coursework to Their Real Lives                                                                                                           Students are more likely to actively engage with a text if they believe that the topics and themes are relevant to their lives on a personal, professional, or political level. If you find that students do not engage with specific texts it may be time to reevaluate what you are using in class. Like anything else, discussion boards can be incredibly effective when used well. Make sure you are reading your students’ posts and starting good discussions yourself. Consider doing the discussions within the e-Book itself to further foster reading and critical thinking. Bring up interesting topics in class to prove that you have read the discussions, and that will likely prompt students to be more thoughtful in their responses. And think about making the discussion boards worth more of students' grades if they are helping you achieve your goals. Let us know if you have other ideas to make discussions even better! ... View more

I’ve taken a fair amount of classes. By the time I crawled across the finish line most people refer to as “graduation,” I had earned enough credits for a double major in English and Linguistics (and just short of a triple major in Speech Pathology). I thought I was going to be an Audiologist. Funny how life turns out. The average class I’ve taken has become a vague memory only to be recalled upon reviewing my transcript, but the ones that stick out (for both positive and negative reasons) have shaped me deeply as both a writer and a generally intellectually curious person. One class that I took close to my degree completion was a course called Hearing Science. This course was one of the core requirements for Linguistics majors at my college and combined anatomy and physiology, audiology, and just a bit of physics to really simplify things. Although the course was a requirement for my major, it wasn’t offered every semester, and since I was a senior I was advised to take it as soon as it was offered. But when it came time for me to register it was only offered as an online class. Despite how daunting it felt to be taking a difficult course fully online, initially the idea of an online class appealed to me. I was working part time, writing my senior thesis, and participating in club activities. Being able to work on my own schedule was something I really needed. But what I hadn’t anticipated was that this particular instructor seemed to believe that “online course” meant “teach yourself.” She uploaded her PowerPoints onto BlackBoard for the entire semester. She had a section for quizzes that would come up bi-weekly. She had a section for the midterm and final exams. That was it. Those PowerPoints and my textbook were the only means of instruction, and the only time I interacted with that instructor that fall was to tell her that BlackBoard had incorrectly marked me wrong on a quiz. This created endless stress and anxiety for me that semester. There are people who are completely capable of teaching themselves how to cook, play guitar, or change a tire. I am not one of those people. I learn by hearing and asking questions. I am one of those annoying students who asks questions she already knows the answers to in class. Somehow hearing things over and over again helps them click in my head. There was no way I was going to perform well in this class if reading was the only way I could learn. So I improvised. I created my own audiobooks by recording myself reading chapters from my textbook. Then when it was time to study I would listen to those tapes religiously. It worked, and I did very well in that class, but this required me putting in time and effort that I didn’t have at the time. I know that this is not the way most instructors teach online, and my experience is just an outlier from the norm. With all the digital technology and online homework systems available there’s really no excuse not to make online learning as effective as possible. Trust me, your students will thank you for it. ... View more

Let’s Play a Game: How does your college match up? By this time of year, high school seniors have received their acceptance letters and have either made their decision of where to attend or will be doing so very soon. It’s also the time of year that colleges shine up their halls to make both their academic and campus life as appealing as possible to visiting students. When making the big decision of where to attend college, most will check various college rankings. U.S. News has been doing an annual ranking of colleges since Sam Adams matriculated at Harvard. They are generally a trusted source of this sort of information, and one of their most popular rankings is their list of the top 50 schools. However in our digital world there are many competing sources. An interesting one is the list on Rate My Professor. It takes into account data on both campus life (school reputation, clubs, and even the food in the cafeteria) and combines it with student feedback on their instructors. One can assume that some of the criteria used by U.S. News factors into this student list, but certainly not all of it. With that in mind we pose these simple questions which we challenge you to answer! We of course will share the answers in a later post. (No Cheating!) 1) How many schools appear on the Top 25 Universities on both the Rate my Professor list and the U.S. News list? 2 3 4 5 6 8 2)  Which one of these schools appear on both lists? Harvard Louisiana State University New York University Washington University in Saint Louis Princeton Dartmouth Bonus: What were the #1 Universities on both lists? (Hint: They are not the same) Submit Your Responses Here! ... View more

Interested in incorporating LaunchPad into your curriculum but want to customize it to meet your needs? Macmillan Learning Curriculum Solutions is here to help. Our dedicated custom team will tailor your chosen LaunchPad course to your specific requirements.   Whether you have your own materials that need to be added to a custom unit, see value in adding an additional Macmillan Learning e-book to your course, or would like to combine student or instructor resources across LaunchPad courses, custom requests are our business.   We work across the disciplines and within all LaunchPad courses. As instructors and students navigate to digital learning materials, we can make the transition smooth by integrating multiple products in one easy-to-use LaunchPad course.   Recent examples include: Integrating A Pocket Guide to College Success e-book by Jamie Shushan into ACES, a nationally norm-referenced student self-assessment of non-cognitive and cognitive skills Incorporating a faculty-authored e-book into LaunchPad Solo for Public Speaking Adding Your College Experience (John N. Gardner; Betsy O. Barefoot; Negar Farakish) LearningCurve to LaunchPad Solo for Readers and Writers Contact your custom specialist today to hear how we can help you get the most out of your LaunchPad course! ... View more

As we near the end of the fall semester, just a few notes to make sure you are ready to wrap up fall and prepare for winter or spring. There is a great section in the LaunchPad Instructor’s Manual called “Track Student Work” which can help you see all of a student’s individual LaunchPad activities—their ‘digital footprint’. Here are some other key articles that might be useful today: Check student activity on individual assignments How to change a student’s grade Check student activity as a whole Import scores for offline assignments, if applicable Zero scores for unsubmitted assignments Export your LaunchPad gradebook Preparing for the Spring Semester We’d like to provide you with some helpful articles on how to make sure your preparation goes smoothly: Create new or copy existing LaunchPad courses (when in doubt, you are probably better off starting with a new course) Set up your spring courses If you copied courses, batch update assignment due dates If you created new courses, create assignments Deactivate your fall courses Activate your spring courses (This is an important step and will result in a personal URL for YOUR COURSE that will be emailed to you and that you should distribute to YOUR STUDENTS! Students must enroll in the course with your specific URL.) Distribute your spring course URLs to your students so that they can enroll in your courses And remember: As usual, you can find links for training, information and help here. Use the opportunity to sign up for a 30 minute training session with a product and discipline expert. It will probably be the most useful 30 minutes you spend prepping this term! And if you run into any issues, you and your students can always contact tech support for help or check out our Instructor User Guide for more information. ... View more

One of the forms of assessment in LaunchPad is called "Data Connections" and is built differently than some of the other measures like LearningCurve and Quizzing. Data Connections has more of an integrative and essay aspect with regard to how it presents itself to students. In this way, it creates a place where students have some free choice in what kind of content they want to look at and how they respond to the assessment prompt. Below, I am using a Data Connections activity from the LaunchPad system on human growth and development. This one is listed as "Common Genetic Diseases and Conditions" - clicking on it will bring up a new window. This particular Data Connections has 4 pages to it. In the screenshot below you will see how Data Connections presents an opening page that introduces the topic.  Clicking on the "Get Started" button at the bottom brings up the interactive table that I have highlighted in yellow below. The student is able to click through the table and learn about each of these different genetic diseases and conditions. Personally, I like having information presented in this way as it allows for the student to become more personally invested in exploring the content provided - contrast this to just reading something in a textbook. While the latter isn't non-educational, having the material appear in a way that is different, I think, helps to capture the student's attention and thereby, hopefully, fosters retention. On the next page, in the following screenshot, the student is prompted to enter a short essay on the previous information that was just presented to them. Unique to Data Connections is how the student's response is very wide open, allowing them to select from a wide range of possibilities as to how they want to show what they learned.  As an important note, being an instructor, you will want to be sure to go back and review the grade for this activity. Data Connections provides a tentative full-credit grade after the student has submitted an answer. As a result, a review by the instructor ensures that the student is learning the concepts and ideas that are required by the course.  Finally, the last page of Data Connections will let the student know that their work has been submitted. It will also provide a list of references that can be referenced on a term paper or used by the student for further learning.  Data Connections, a unique form of assessment in LaunchPad, has the benefit of providing the student with a broad range of possibilities of how to respond and demonstrate their knowledge. It does this through presenting the material interactivity and by using essay questions as a way to gauge the student's progress. Data Connections is another feature unique to the LaunchPad learning system. ... View more

In Part 1 of the series “LaunchPad”, I focused on how to use LaunchPad in your classes and what tools are helpful to use.  Part 2 of the “LaunchPad” series went on to discuss the most important aspect, the benefits to the students in using the product. The 3 rd and final part of the “LaunchPad” series is the benefits to the instructor. As an instructor, I continue to appreciate the benefits of efficiency, ease, and freeing up class time to teach using hands-on activities.  In freeing up class time, I have been able to improve my teaching to apply the information, complete activities, and drive concepts home more for students.  The use of digital products also enables our culture’s desirable use of technology in the classroom.  Breaking down these instructor benefits in more detail, let’s start with the most significant benefit to me…efficiency. I am so grateful for the time digital learning saves me from grading and entering grades.  Assigning LearningCurve assignments, as well as learning to use LearningCurves, is fast and easy.  Having students take their LearningCurves and quizzes online frees up more class time for me to teach and complete application activities.  I also appreciate that the quizzes and LearningCurves are already created for me.  Again, it saves me time not to have to write these, and I can even edit them if I wish.  I am also so pleased and confident when I can provide students with more affordable options since purchasing the online version is usually lower cost.  A repeat from a previous post, it forces students to actually USE their text, and delve into the material.  Especially in the communication discipline, I find it provides students with a better understanding, with the ability to apply it, and to RETAIN it.  Thus, I have seen my students be more successful and have higher grades.  Since students all have different learning styles, it adds the benefit to serve many different learning styles.  To reiterate, it also gives students an opportunity to use technology in their learning. In summary, my 3-part series “LaunchPad” discussed the digital products I use, how I use LaunchPad, the benefits to the students and to the instructor.  The benefits I’ve seen have been well worth the use.  If you have any hesitation on beginning the process of using digital products, I emphasize that it is not difficult, and is fast and easy to use.  If you still waver on the decision, Macmillan offers many opportunities to train and help you.   With the benefits to the students and instructor and the ability to get ahead on the latest technological savvy classroom, I encourage you to jump on board. ... View more

In Part 1 of the series “LaunchPad”, I focused on how to use LaunchPad in your classes and what tools are helpful to use. The important aspect, besides how and what to use in LaunchPad, is the benefits of using LearningCurve to the students.  I discovered these benefits from observation of students and their grades, speaking with them, and surveying students at the end of the semester.  I ascertained most students see the benefits and appreciate use of LearningCurve.  Students are benefitting by preparing in reading their material more, retaining more information, appreciating the ease of use, being provided an affordable option, and providing successful learning opportunities in a stress-free environment. To break down the benefits more precisely, the most common benefits include:  Students learn and retain the material better. In the past, I always struggled with encouraging students to read their text; however, they now actually read the e-text and remember the content!  The digital platform is user friendly.  Students appreciate having to only log in through one site (through BlackBoard), and once they have logged in the first time, they never are required to log in again if they enter through BlackBoard.  It surprised me how much students dislike login pages because they won’t remember their login information.  Having immediate access to the text online anytime from anywhere is extremely helpful.  Students have been known to access the text and quizzes from school, home and even work during their busy, mobile schedules. Students concur that online quizzes from home are preferred over in-class quizzes and exams.  They value the ability to take an exam on their own time when they are comfortable, because they are able to use resources, and have the ability to take the quiz during the time of day they learn best or when they have time.  Students also like that they can start an assignment, save it, and return to it later.  In short, students are “testing” well because they are completing it in a stress-free environment. It is also satisfying for students to see their grade transfer and appear in their BlackBoard gradebook.  It provides for a productive feeling with immediate feedback.  It also keeps students from having to “record-keep” or save hard copies of assignments, quizzes and exams. Students expressed gratitude that the professor actually used the materials that students were required to purchase, and they were grateful for the reasonable price.  As surprising as it is to me, students complain that many professors never refer to or use the products students spent a lot of money on.  In using this product, students are offered an affordable option that they will indeed use and learn from. The digital product saves students time in many ways, from the ability to purchase e-text access online (no trips to the expensive bookstore!), having access any time, having their grades tracked and transferred for them, etc… In the high technology culture we now live in, most students have trouble keeping their technology devices put away.  Further, many young students arrive at college having greatly used technology in their middle and high school education.  Whether we like it or not, simply put, this is how they now learn.  Therefore, if many students learn from technology, prefer technology, and don’t want to go without it, I see it as a benefit to harness technology and incorporate it into their learning. Check back for the third and final post on how using LaunchPad can benefit you, the instructor. ... View more

“Professor, may we take more quizzes than what’s assigned?  Will you go ahead and assign more LearningCurves?  I’d like to do some ahead of schedule.”  Do these questions from students seem like an unrealistic dream?  As unrealistic as they sound, they have indeed been asked on numerous occasions since I started using LearningCurve assignments through LaunchPad. Before using digital products, most instructors dream of having motivated students who plan ahead and have a desire to learn.  Although we may have a few of these students here and there, they are not common.  Therefore, when I have a product that encourages a student to work hard and work ahead, I jump on it.  Using Macmillan Digital Products, including LaunchPad and its LearningCurve, have proven to be extremely beneficial to my students and me (the instructor).  I’d like to encourage you to jump on board, too, by sharing the following four helpful aspects to using LaunchPad:  1.) Which products I use; 2.) How I use LaunchPad; 3.) The benefits to the students; and 4.) The benefits to the Instructor.  In this first part of my LaunchPad series, I will focus on which products I use and how I use them. First, let’s start with which digital products I use.  I have used several different publishing companies’ digital learning, and LaunchPad is easily the most user friendly thus far.  I currently use LaunchPad for both “Real Communication” (Intro to Speech Communication) and “A Speaker’s Guidebook” (Public Speaking) texbooks. Second, how I use LaunchPad may be helpful.  It’s important to note that when using digital learning, such as LaunchPad, it should appear in your syllabus so students realize the importance of their use of the product to their learning and overall grade from the beginning of the semester. I have LaunchPad mentioned in four places within my syllabus to drive home the significance.  Within my syllabus, LaunchPad appears in the sub headed sections, “Required Text/Materials”, “Course Policies: Exams/Quizzes”, “Grading Evaluation”, and “Class Schedule.” An example of one of the places in my syllabus that LaunchPad appears is in the image below.  You will also see from the image that students have immediate access to the Publisher’s Help Desk contact information.  This will ensure the instructors do not have to deal with any technical difficulties that may arise. Next, let’s also look at how LaunchPad appears in my BlackBoard (Learning Management System/LMS), because this makes access to LaunchPad for both the instructor and students so easy.  Additionally, it enables integration so grades can be transferred over from LaunchPad to the BlackBoard gradebook. Now, more importantly, what types of assignments are in LaunchPad?  The specific assignments I use in LaunchPad range from a PRCA (Self-Assessment Score of Communication Apprehension), the e-text, Chapter LearningCurves, “What About You?” Self-Assessments, Tips & Techniques (for Anxiety Reduction), and Videos (Speech samples) and 2-minute video clips.  All of the assignments help students retain and apply the material. As you’ll see, the home page of LaunchPad is similar to a modern technological look students are familiar with.  Furthermore, it is user friendly by having gradebook, calendar, e-text, and assignments with due dates all at first glance when they enter LaunchPad. A favorite assignment feature on LaunchPad is the LearningCurve.  Macmillan describes LearningCurves as an adaptive quizzing and personalized learning program that puts the concept of "testing to learn" into action. It is game-like quizzing motivating students to engage with their course.    In the sample question, you can see students will be shown if they answered correctly.  If they answered incorrectly, it will further explain why he or she missed it, followed by an opportunity to try again, get a hint, access the e-text, or have it look up the answer for them.  The student has a total number of points to reach to finish the quiz, so the more they answer correctly from the start, the more points and faster they will reach their total.  If they are missing concepts, they will be asked about those again to ensure they learn the content.  At the bottom of the screen, they are able to track their progress. After covering how I use the digital products in my classes as well as the great tools available, return in a few days to read part 2 and 3 of this series which will focus on the most important part: the benefits of using LaunchPad to the students and instructor. ... View more

Do you get frustrated by computers, tablets, and phones in your class? Do you feel that students are not paying attention to the material you carefully crafted? In a recent conversations with a few intro biology instructors, I discovered some innovative solutions to the in-class technology conundrum. Firstly, acknowledging that everyone is a different learner is important. Sure, some students might be browsing Twitter, but some individuals need stimulation and input to be engaged and effective listeners. In the same way, a student with back problems might choose to stand rather than sit for an hour of class. If one student's screen is distracting other students, that is a different scenario. You have the option to intervene. However, consider instead creating a “digital district” at the start of class to proactively prevent this issue. You know that all the students with computers are going to cluster on the side of the lecture hall with electrical outlets. So at the start of class, indicate that students using devices can sit in a particular area. Now comes the fantastic part of this deal. You have instant access to any online resource through the students using devices in-class! You let the digital district know that you may call on any student with a device at a moment's notice to look up a fact or confirm a finding. So imagine you are midway through a lecture and a student asks a questions that you don’t know off the top of your head. You might normally respond, “I’ll get you an answer for next time”. But now that you have a Digital District, the world wide web is at the fingertips of your students with devices. Simply ask one or two of them to investigate and come back to get an response a few minutes later. This makes researching, fact checking, and understanding additional material part of the learning process. ... View more

I got my assignment for teaching courses next semester. I’m teaching four sections of a course that I have not taught in two years: the research essay. I’ve composed my themes (two, because I’m an overachiever): Conservation and the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, two of my research and teaching loves. This next semester is particularly rough because right now I’m teaching the course just before the research paper course, and those students who choose to take my course again are going to call me on my every move and complain that I “did that last semester.” I need to shake things up, and LaunchPad can help with this. When I was teaching at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, two librarians, Vicky Lebbin and Dave Brier, taught a 50-minute class to first-year composition students on the research question. In that workshop, they asked students to draw (artistically) their research question or thesis (depending). The theory, Dave explained to me, is that if the student can’t draw it, it isn’t concrete or specific enough.  I’m taking that one step further and having them storyboard their research essay. A storyboard is frequently used in the film industry as a planning tool to describe or demonstrate a television episode or film. It is also used in larger graphic novels. These storyboards set the tone for what is to come. Unlike the film storyboards, however, the storyboards I assign are not complex and not drawn or pasted on some type of sturdy material. They do, however, serve the same function.  I will have students post up their storyboards on LaunchPad in Powerpoint form, allowing other students to view them. Viewing other people’s work helps students to increase their self-efficacy because viewing success in others can lead to a student saying, “I can do that!” In the way I’m describing, the storyboard acts as an outline to the research essay. The PowerPoint slides can be arranged any way a student wants, allowing a student to play with organizing an essay in different forms, giving him or her the opportunity to branch out of tried and true ways (think five-paragraph essay, which while having its place, really won’t work for every type of writing students will encounter while in college). Having peers review the storyboard helps a student to refine what he or she wants to present to a reader and provide him or her with yet another tool to help piece together a fully fleshed-out idea of what that final research product will look like. Yet another benefit to the storyboard is that a student can then self-identify what areas of the essay need more support or to tighten the focus and to eliminate some sections of the proposed essay altogether. One of the things that I love about LaunchPad is that I can use it as an archival database. If I start to notice trends or want to check to see if a method or modality works, everything is contained in one place. I can go back to test my theory to see if it has merit. Because I teach using multimodality and digital tools, my students ultimately benefit from LaunchPad, too. Through the use of LaunchPad to upload the assignments on to a discussion post, the students then have an archive to turn to, to view different ideas of presenting material--it’s another tool in the proverbial toolbox, and it’s a tool with many examples. Keeping the storyboards in one place also allows me to demonstrate previous successes to a new group of students every semester that I teach this course. I can access previous courses easily and quickly through LaunchPad’s dashboard, and those storyboards I show to students can create a new generation of storyboards that are even better than when I first created this assignment. For me, having easy access to digital assignments is helpful in multiple ways. College freshmen need to see successful examples, and LaunchPad can provide me with the digital archive that helps me to not only teach courses, but to keep previous assignments, refine those assignments, and ultimately (if I choose to go down this route) to write a publication on the assignments and trends that I’ve noticed. It all adds up to a more robust classroom that I can access any time to help me design, refine, and demonstrate. ... 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