New York, NY; Feb. 20, 2024 -- Macmillan Learning today announced the launch of the iClicker AI Question Creator, a new tool for instructors that harnesses the power of generative AI to create engaging and effective learning experiences for students. The AI Question Creator beta builds on the company’s market-leading iClicker platform and will be available to the first 5,000 instructors. Rooted in modern pedagogy and enhanced by generative AI, the iClicker AI Question Creator enables instructors to effortlessly craft and deploy unique questions that facilitate an  interactive and engaged classroom experience. Tailored to fit any discipline or topic, the question creator allows educators to specify the desired level of rigor, course level, and learning taxonomy, ensuring the questions align with their teaching goals.  “The AI Question Creator paves the way for a more dynamic, adaptive, and interactive learning environment. The tool’s intelligent design saves instructors time, allowing them to spend it where it’s most important, which is engaging with their students," said Steven Ray, VP, Enterprise Solutions for Macmillan Learning. The questions can be used for iClicker polls, quizzes, and assignments and can be deployed to students in seconds. Importantly, the questions are unique and not easily searchable online, which provides a more authentic assessment of students’ true understanding of the course material. iClicker's real-time display of the instructor-generated questions allows for immediate student engagement, fostering an environment that supports more effective learning.  The AI Question Creator will allow 5,000 instructors to each generate up to 50 unique questions in just minutes during the beta period. Instructors can sign up for the beta using their existing iClicker account; those that are new to iClicker should first create an account here. The beta is scheduled to last through May, with the commercial launch expected this Fall. Key Features and Benefits: Some of the many features and benefits of the question generator include: Effortless Question Creation: Instructors can input discipline, topic, question type, and other settings to generate up to 50 unique questions. They can then immediately use the new questions, navigating between the slides and whether they’d like to show or hide the answers to students. Real-Time Adaptability: Instructors are better able to meet students where they are, adapting instantly to areas of struggle and engaging them in unexpected ways. Enhanced Academic Integrity: The tool's ability to create instant, unique questions provides greater assurance of academic honesty. “After teaching introductory biology for 12 years, I find it harder and harder to come up with novel quiz questions. Using the AI Question Creator allowed me to easily generate personalized questions that varied on topic, content, scenario, and Bloom’s level, all with an easy-to-use drop-down-box and text entry interface,” said Justin Shaffer, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and a Teaching Professor at the Colorado School of Mines. iClicker was developed by a team of physicists and educational researchers out of the University of Illinois. It is the most widely used student response system in higher education with more than 7,000 active instructors engaging more than 1.3 million students each year. It creates a user-friendly and immersive active learning environment before, during, and after class by fostering active learning. It works by creating opportunities for quizzing, group collaboration, and polling. Students can answer anonymously how confident they are in the day’s learning, and instructors have real-time insights about students’ comprehension. About Macmillan Learning Macmillan Learning is a privately-held, family-owned company that inspires what’s possible for every learner. We envision a world in which every learner succeeds. Through our content, tools and services, we aim to make that a reality. To learn more, please visit macmillanlearning.com or join our Macmillan Community. ... View more

New York, October 20, 2020 -- Macmillan Learning, a privately-held, family owned company, announced the launch of iClicker Insights today. The new retention survey and analytics software, which combines components of Macmillan Learning’s market leading classroom response system, with the student success expertise of its analytics and research team, was developed to help colleges support student success by reducing attrition, a problem estimated by the Department of Education to cost $16 billion annually that has been compounded by the Coronavirus pandemic. iClicker combined its expertise in delivering technology solutions that capture student activity and feedback, with the assessment expertise of Macmillan Learning’s analytics and research team to provide early, actionable insights on students’ experiences inside and outside of the classroom. It works by integrating early trends on students’ course attendance, engagement, and self-reporting on key retention factors. This gives administrators and student support advocates a more holistic understanding of students’ early college experiences, helps to identify barriers to student success as early as possible, and informs intervention strategies that help keep students engaged and enrolled.  There are a number of reasons why students don’t succeed in college, from financial to personal reasons -- like feeling like they don’t belong or having other obligations. Additionally, numerous studies underscore the importance of class attendance on student outcomes and retention.  “For nearly twenty years iClicker has been regarded as the best classroom student engagement solution because it is pedagogically-sound and incredibly easy-to-use. With iClicker Insights, institutions now have an easily scalable way to quickly identify the students who may need additional support by using multiple data points like attendance, classroom engagement, and student self-reporting on key retention factors like their sense of belonging,” said Steven Ray, Vice President, iClicker. Some of the ways institutions around the country have already begun to use iClicker Insights include: When COVID-19 required an unexpectedly quick transition to online learning, institutions like the University of Tennessee at Martin used iClicker Insights COVID-19 surveys to gauge the impact of the transition on students and identify specific intervention needs of individual students.  The University of Missouri uses iClicker Insight’s brief student retention surveys to enhance its Student Success and Retention Department’s existing success initiatives. The survey helps administrators identify retention risks even earlier and target interventions to individual students’ most pressing needs.  University of Houston’s Department of Housing and Residence Life uses iClicker Insights surveys to understand how students are acclimating to life on campus in a fall that looks very different than ever before. They’re using it this fall to understand how students are doing both inside and outside of their online classrooms. The University of Memphis used iClicker Insight’s automated attendance reporting analytics for early identification of students with troubling attendance patterns to direct interventions before the student fell too far behind in their coursework. Ryan Crews, Student Success Coordinator, University of Memphis said, “One of our biggest barriers to widespread attendance reporting has been the inability to make attendance reporting easy and accurate … With this tool, we are able to move beyond simply recording attendance and think strategically about how we help students work through issues that affect their class attendance.”  How it works iClicker Insights offers comprehensive reports and dashboards from iClicker attendance, in-class engagement, and retention surveys. The actionable insights help pinpoint when students may benefit from additional academic or skills-based advising or counseling support and highlight any engagement trends within courses or across departments. Information from iClicker and the retention surveys can be uploaded into an institution’s existing LMS and student success solutions. With iClicker Insights, critical information on class attendance -- one of the earliest and most significant indicators of student retention -- no longer winds up either buried or siloed within multiple departments. In addition to attendance, iClicker encourages students’ participation and engagement in class via active learning and can be used synchronously and asynchronously on laptops, mobile devices, or iClicker remotes.  The short, pre-built retention surveys in iClicker Insights collect and assess students’ self-reported motivation, experiences, and plans. By looking at critical non-cognitive factors, like homesickness,  sense of belonging, campus engagement, and financial concerns, the surveys provide crucial context for student outreach efforts. The student retention surveys were created by assessment experts with more than twenty years experience in higher education. Two new COVID-related surveys were also created this past spring to help institutions understand and provide services to support students as they transitioned to online classes.  “With the pandemic still impacting many students’ experience in and out of the classroom, it’s more important than ever that institutions understand where students are struggling. By using surveys to pinpoint students' pain points, institutions are empowered to use their resources where they’re most needed. We’ve been able to apply what we’ve learned from decades of partnership with more than 150 institutions to help them do that more efficiently, and have seen firsthand the impact that it has had on student success and retention,” explained Dr. Sherry Woosley, Macmillan Learning’s Senior Director of Analytics and Research. For more information on iClicker Insights’ visit: iclicker.com/institutions About iClicker iClicker was developed by a team of physicists/educational researchers out of the University of Illinois and is currently used at more than 1,200 Institutions by more than 5,000 Instructors and more than 10M students. About Macmillan Learning Macmillan Learning is a privately-held, family-owned company that improves lives through learning. By linking research to learning practice, we develop pioneering products and learning materials for students that are highly effective and drive improved outcomes. Our engaging content is developed in partnership with the world's best researchers, educators, administrators, and developers. To learn more, please visit macmillanlearning.com or join our Macmillan Community. ... View more

New York, August 5, 2020 -- iClicker, a Macmillan Learning Company, announced today a new partnership with Perusall, the interactive, digital content company to address two of the most pressing concerns for higher education in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic: student engagement and affordability.  According to an Inside Higher Education study, higher education faculty are most concerned with ensuring student engagement in virtual learning environments, and the potential for online classes to have an inequitable impact on underrepresented students. The study revealed 87% of respondents are concerned over the impact of virtual classes on students from low-income backgrounds and 77% view the ability to maintain student engagement when teaching online as ‘somewhat challenging’ to ‘very challenging’.  Instructors can use iClicker to take attendance, facilitate active learning and complete in-class quizzes using mobile devices or iClicker remotes. iClicker was developed by teaching professors and is currently used at more than 1,200 institutions by more than 5,000 instructors and more than 10M students.  “Student engagement is in both iClicker and Perusall’s DNA, as both were created by educators who are recognized as leaders in researching and using active learning and peer instruction methodologies. This new partnership will help make iClicker’s polling, quizzing and assignments even more accessible with Perusall’s content engagement platform and will ultimately support deeper learning, wherever it happens,” said Steven Ray, Vice President of Macmillan Learning Institutional Solutions. The iClicker and Perusall partnership will make it even easier to facilitate peer-to-peer learning and deep content engagement in virtual environments, at an affordable price. There is early proof that the partnership can help foster deep connections with content and peers in an online learning environment. Last spring, amid the outbreak of COVID-19 that demanded a quick pivot to teaching virtually, University of Louisville Psychology Professor Edna Ross, PhD, used Perusall and iClicker to deliver the same active, peer-to-peer learning methodologies she has become known for delivering in her face-to-face classes. “Before iClicker, it was very difficult to get input from all of my students and before Perusall it was a struggle to get students to read the material,” explains Ross. “Once class moved online due to COVID-19, students in my class quickly found a rhythm of beginning discussions with Perusall asynchronously and then responding with iClicker questions during synchronous sessions to dive deeper into opinions in class. Using both together really impacted learning and engagement for the entire class.”  The partnership will enable Perusall customers to purchase access to iClicker’s student mobile app at a discounted price, delivering course content and engagement capabilities to support deep learning in both synchronous and asynchronous learning methodologies common in online courses. “We are excited to partner with iClicker to combine our affordable, digital learning solutions to help students engage more fully with the course content and one another. With so many courses needing to move online this fall, this is important now more than ever,” said Brian Lukoff, Perusall co-founder and CEO. Click here for more information on how iClicker and Perusall are being used at University of Louisville. About Macmillan Learning Macmillan Learning is a privately-held, family-owned company that improves lives through learning. By linking research to learning practice, we develop pioneering products and learning materials for students that are highly effective and drive improved outcomes.. To learn more, please visit macmillanlearning.com or or join our Macmillan Community. About Perusall Perusall is a free social learning platform that delivers reading and video assignments to students before they come to class.  The platform incorporates content delivery with collaborative annotation tools to ensure students read more, come to class prepared, and are more engaged in the learning experience, enabling instructors to teach more effectively. Automated reports document where students struggle the most to understand course content, allowing instructors to specifically address these issues in class. More than 500,000 students at over 2,000 educational institutions in 75+ countries use Perusall. To learn more visit www.perusall.com.   ... View more