Macmillan Learning offers a wealth of peer-to-peer resources, from whitepapers and case studies to 1:1 connection and communities with instructors with common teaching goals. Notably, the Macmillan Peer Consultant program has connected numerous current Achieve users with instructors considering using Achieve in their own classes.  Specifically for Math & Stats, the Macmillan team also features a number of team members with direct teaching experience in the courses that we serve, and those folks help answer questions and share best practices based on their expertise and experience with Macmillan products and titles.  Welcome Will Hall to the Macmillan Math & Stats team as Teaching & Learning Strategist!  Will Hall holds a Ph.D. in mathematics education from North Carolina State University and previously taught high school mathematics in the Raleigh/Durham area. A first-generation college graduate and Upward Bound alum, he earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Maine. Most recently, he was an assistant professor at Washington State University, researching calculus education and teacher identity while developing corequisite programming and peer learning assistant initiatives. Passionate about making mathematics accessible and meaningful, he explores its role in equity and justice. Now based in Vancouver, WA, he enjoys cooking, reading, music, and playing arcade games with his kids. Will works directly with instructors to explore how Macmillan's products and Achieve can help them fulfill their teaching goals and help improve the learning experience for students.  Want to get in touch? Reach out to Will directly at will.hall@macmillan.com or contact your rep to set up a meeting.  ... View more

Daren Starnes and Josh Tabor are no strangers to the world of publishing, but following the success of their high school titles in statistics, they endeavored to bring their distinct voices and goal of elevating all students to introductory statistics at colleges and universities. They joined forces with Ann Cannon, professor at Cornell College and author of STAT2, to write Introductory Statistics: A Student-Centered Approach, the first modern introductory/general statistics title to offer a true blend of computation and conceptual understanding, appropriate for instructors and learners from a variety of math backgrounds, that emphasizes the importance of statistical thinking in the real world, as messy as it can sometimes be.     “In addition to the intriguing contexts included in the examples and exercises, we structured the book to make it clear what students need to know and be able to do. We hope that using Introductory Statistics: A Student-Centered Approach enhances your statistics course and builds a foundation of statistical literacy that will connect students to the world around them. ” – Ann Cannon, Daren Starnes, & Josh Tabor   Download the preface or learn more about their title here: Introductory Statistics: A Student-Centered Approach    Or learn more about their high school titles here: The Practice of Statistics  ... View more

Competing at the Olympic level means every second and centimeter count.   That’s why athletic gear is so important!  Looking for athletics examples and exercises in your statistics course that are a little outside of the box? Check out a sample of some of our favorite content, all about the shoes, fuel, and equipment that Olympic athletes rely on to compete at the highest level.   What other athletic gear do you think could lend a good data set to statistical analysis?  Achieve allows instructors to write their own questions, or edit pre-built questions, to incorporate any examples, skills, or exercises that work best for their class.   Want to see more? Browse more features of Achieve for Statistics, or sign up for a demo here!     ... View more

“Dive” into Achieve for Statistics exercises from our favorite Olympic water sports. Are you and your statistics students watching this year’s Summer Olympics? It's a great opportunity to bring examples into your classroom from swimming and diving using our Achieve homework questions with embedded data sets. We include data sets and technology how-to videos for Excel, JMP, Minitab, R, RCmdr, SPSS, TI calculators, and more!   From Kokoska's Introductory Statistics 3e, now with Achieve!   Check out more great features of Achieve for Statistics here, or sign up for a demo! ... View more

  Water color painting of an Olympic torch The fastest, the highest, and the furthest. Track & Field is full of exciting events, which, beyond showcasing incredible athletic feats, also produce some great data sets for statistical analysis. What's your favorite track & field event? Check out our range of track & field questions in Achieve for Statistics to see how you can "track" the data in your own class, alongside this year's Summer Olympics.   See more examples below or sign up for a demo to explore more features of Achieve for Statistics!   ... View more

Download the whitepaper! Oregon State University is a public four-year college serving over 26,000 undergraduate students. The instructor who partnered with us on this study, Sara Clark, taught 39 students in a face-to-face formatted instruction. The instructor used Achieve throughout the Fall 2021 semester. During this study the instructor assigned homework assignments and post-lecture summative assessments. The instructor reported that students were engaged in their class and students also reported they found Achieve engaging. 100% reported being engaged in the course this semester. 79% reported being actively engaged in classroom discussions. 95% reported engaging in active learning in the course this semester. Both the instructor and the students found Achieve easy to use: 84% reported they were comfortable using Achieve.  Furthermore, Achieve supports student comprehension of classroom material. The instructor reported that the tools within Achieve helped them understand where their students had gaps in their knowledge and also enhanced their pedagogical framework. 79% of students reported that Achieve was effective in supporting their learning over the semester. “The best part was the chance to answer questions multiple times if you got them wrong with the extra chances feature. It encouraged me to reexamine how I answered a question, and look further into the process of how I solved it to seek out mistakes.” —Oregon State Student Student engagement in Achieve appears to be related to student academic achievement. Although the relationship between how many activities students finished within Achieve (as a percentage of how many were assigned in the course) and their final grade in the course was not statistically significant, we can see that those students who are completing more Achieve activities do have higher grades on average. For more details on this study, as well as an additional study on another OSU calculus class, take a look at the white papers below! This series will continue with an in-depth look at the precalculus and calculus classes at more of the schools that participated in this study. ... View more

Precalculus At Penn State University, Amine Benkiran, math instructor, taught 45 students in a face-to-face course. The instructor used Achieve throughout the Fall 2021 semester. During this study, the instructor assigned homework assignments and LearningCurve adaptive quizzes. Students found Achieve engaging and encouraging of active learning.  89% reported being engaged in the course this semester. 89% reported the pre-lecture activities within Achieve as engaging. 94% reported engaging in active learning in the course this semester. 89% reported pre-lecture activities in Achieve helped them actively learn in the classroom. Benkiran reported that the tools within Achieve helped them understand where their students had gaps in their knowledge and also enhanced their pedagogical framework. Students agreed: 83% reported that Achieve was effective in supporting their learning over the semester. 89% reported that using Achieve helped them gain a better mastery of the course content than courses without Achieve. Ultimately, student engagement in Achieve appears to be related to student academic achievements as there was a statistically significant relationship between how many activities students finished within Achieve (as a percentage of how many were assigned in the course) and their final grade in the course. This relationship remained significant even while controlling for students reported high school GPA, p < .05.   Calculus The instructor who partnered with us on this study taught 121 students across two sections of calculus in a face-to-face formatted instruction. He has taught for more than ten years. The instructor reported being somewhat comfortable implementing digital tools in this course. The instructor used Achieve throughout the Fall 2021 semester. During this study the instructor assigned homework assignments and LearningCurve adaptive quizzes. The instructor reported observing a more than typical amount of active learning in their course and that students were moderately engaged in their class. Students also reported they found Achieve engaging and that it helped them prepare for class.  94% reported being engaged in the course this semester. 88% reported engaging in active learning in the course this semester. 76% reported that Achieve helped support their learning. Both the instructor and students reported Achieve was easy to use: 97% reported they were comfortable using Achieve. Achieve supports student comprehension of classroom material. The instructor reported that the tools within Achieve helped them understand where their students had gaps in their knowledge and also enhanced their pedagogical framework. 79% reported that using Achieve helped them gain a better mastery of the course content than courses without Achieve. 87% reported that homework within Achieve helped fill gaps in their knowledge. 84% reported that homework within Achieve fostered deeper insights into the class content. As in Penn State’s precalculus course, student engagement in Achieve appears to be related to student academic achievement. There was a statistically significant relationship between how many activities students finished within Achieve (as a percentage of how many were assigned in the course) and their final grade in the course. This relationship remained significant even while controlling for students reported high school GPA, p < .01.   For more details on the studies done in partnership with Penn State University, take a look at the white papers below! This series will continue with an in-depth look at the precalculus and calculus classes at more of the schools that participated in this study. ... View more

iClicker and Achieve: Active Learning in the Math and Statistics Classroom Resources for the math and stats classrooms are not in short supply. You could choose several tools for your course, but switching between multiple programs within a single class period can quickly become problematic. Together, Achieve and iClicker are an exceptionally effective and convenient pairing for making a math or statistics classroom more interactive, and, because iClicker is integrated into Achieve, managing the two programs really feels like managing one.  iClicker and Achieve pair seamlessly, and when using them together you gain access to additional capabilities including: Taking attendance with the click of a button Setting up ice-breaker questions so students can get to know each other (and you can see who would work best with each other in group assignments) Boosting engagement with polling questions Providing opportunities for whole-class participation in a low-stress environment Offering tighter feedback loops where students are more concerned about getting the right answer to a question rather than what their overall grade is Creating automatic review resources based on the questions you ask, with iClicker, in class At the very heart of iClicker’s functionality is active learning. iClicker is designed to get students involved in the lesson they’re learning by instigating a two-way conversation with immediate feedback.  Tip: Use iClicker to ask entrance questions such as: What do you remember most from our last class?  What part of the homework gave you the most trouble?  Based on your students' responses, you can then pivot your lesson plan for the day to address common issues. iClicker is also a great tool for: Think-pair-share activities. Put up a question all students answer. Before sharing the answer, ask students to talk to each other about why they picked their response. Asking the same question a second time will show whether students shifted their answer choice. This is a dynamic way to engage students and get them talking with each other.  Virtual hand-raising. This is a great alternative to having a chat that gets out of control if you’re teaching virtually or in a hybrid format. It brings a little order back into the course and is a more official way for students to communicate with you.  Confidence checks. Using the anonymity feature in iClicker, you’re able to have students answer a question without having to feel like they’re going to get singled out. This is perfect for the question, Do you understand everything we just covered? Having to raise your hand in front of everyone to respond is embarrassing, but iClicker makes it anonymous and easy. How Achieve Keeps Students Organized Another way to utilize features in both Achieve and iClicker is to help get students organized. Within Achieve, students can see their to-do list of assignments as well as the big picture with an entire course content view. Because Achieve and iClicker are integrated, even iClicker work is listed for students to see. This helps prevent students from claiming they didn’t know what the homework was.  You can also assign adaptive quizzing to keep students on the right learning path. It’s a great pre-class assignment to get students organized with the right terms and concepts. As the instructor, you have the ability to decide what content you want students to see in Achieve, and what you don’t, so you’re able to highlight those features that will really help students keep it together. How Achieve Reinforces Math and Stats Concepts  Being able to assign iClicker questions within an Achieve assignment means more coverage that related to the topic you’re teaching. Students can answer a question in class in real time and get scored immediately. Then, you can put the same question into Achieve for students to answer on their own time through the program’s interface.  Try this example, suggested from one of our Achieve for Calculus users:  Ask your students to use the Target question to find the inflection point on a graph, then you can select the area in which the right answer falls to grade the question.             How Achieve Supports Instructors  Two features in particular allow Achieve to give instructors a break in their own workload: pre-built activity guides and assessments.  Activity guides span varied topics throughout the course. Topics are timely, relevant, and interesting to students.Instead of having to come up with what to do from scratch, Achieve presents a step-by-step guide for preparing and implementing the activity. You get everything you need to do, including tools like worksheets, presentation slides, and even iClicker questions when available.  Take a closer look at Instructor Activity Guides: The assessment engine within Achieve is mobile-friendly and meets accessibility standards. Students can see it and use it on any device. It links the interactive e-book, hints, course-specific resources, and a variety of tools that can help with homework assignments. The assessment engine also gives students detailed feedback as they work, making it easier to address any errors or misconceptions. Learn more about Achieve ... View more