This year, 10,218 college instructors and 131,921 students used Achieve. Here, we break down what biology instructors and students really think about using the platform in their classrooms.  Overall, 83% of biology instructors agree that Achieve was a valuable asset for student study and review. John Geiser, an instructor at Western Michigan University, said, “Students like it and I think they actually learned more than when they were left to their own devices to learn the material.”  And he’s right! Students do like Achieve. 93% of biology students said that Achieve was easy to use and 83% agreed that it helped them study or review for quizzes and exams. Sophia Gonzalez, a student at College of Dupage, said, “I absolutely loved the e-book and all of the graphics, visuals, and content that helped me learn biology this semester. Everything was really easy to understand and to-the-point. I would definitely recommend Achieve to my friends!” Macmillan’s iClicker response system is included with Achieve. 91% of biology instructors shared that the time they invested in iClicker was worthwhile and 88% agree iClicker increased student engagement and preparedness. Moreover, Brian Black, a Bay de Noc Community College instructor, noted that iClicker is a great tool to have with a mix of both live and remote students.  Check out the infographic below for more stats and details from our user survey on what biology instructors and students really think about Achieve. ... View more

Skills and Key Features of Biology: How Life Works, 4e Achieve for Morris, Biology: How Life Works, 4e includes multiple features which focus on building scientific skills. These can help students review skills they may have learned in previous courses and reinforce key biology concepts.    Skills Primers The Skills Primers are self-paced tutorials that guide students to learn, practice, and use skills, like data visualization and graphing, experimental design, working with numbers, reading and building phylogenies, and working with models. These short tutorials can be used throughout the course as refreshers to aid students with the core skills they need to work with data. How Do We Know? Activities How Do We Know? activities are designed to provide practice for students in the skills they need to think like a scientist. These activities are available in every chapter and accompany the How Do We Know? feature in the textbook—walking students through scientific inquiry and data analysis⁠, and ending with application questions that extend to new information. Cases A key feature of How Life Works is that it connects key concepts to one another, highlighting the bigger relevance of understanding biology. Throughout the textbook, Cases and Visual Synthesis figures provide a framework for connecting and assimilating information. The eight Cases highlight topics, such as cancer and climate change, and showcase how concepts learned in individual chapters connect to these larger, relevant areas of biology. Visual Syntheses Every Visual Synthesis figure in the textbook has an interactive counterpart in Achieve. Each interactive offers an immersive, highly visual learning environment that includes informative text, embedded animations, simulations, virtual tours, and links between interactives, helping students see how individual concepts connect to tell a single story. New to this edition: two new Visual Syntheses covering the History of Earth and Life, and Homeostasis can be found in the textbook and Achieve. How Life Works Podcasts The How Life Works Podcasts cover pertinent topics that relate directly to the material in the textbook. New to this edition: the authors of How Life Works interview a diverse selection of scientists about research topics, which directly align with each of the eight Cases found in the textbook. Each podcast includes background information about the author and a set of open-ended reflection questions that can be assigned to students.   Which features do you use? Comment below to let us know! ... View more

Customize Your Course in Achieve It’s important that you use Achieve in a way that works for you. Here are some strategies for personalizing your course:   Course Creation When you create your course, you can choose a course populated with all the chapters and resources provided or you can build your course piece by piece from our library of content. The pre-built course in Achieve includes several types of assessments, but Achieve also has a bank of questions available to instructors for ultimate customizability. These are some best practices on curating and adapting your course to fit your style. Where To Go To Assign Content  In a prebuilt course, you can assign content directly from our Course Content page by clicking on the calendar icon next to the content item or from the resources page.  How to Find and Filter Content In the Resources tab, you can see all of the content that has been assigned, and you can add new content. You can use the filters on the left to help you find what type of content you are looking for. How to Edit Assignment Details A checkmark appears next to an assignment that has already been added to your course. Click on the calendar/plus icon to edit student visibility, due date, etc. How to Edit Assignment Content From the Resource page, click into an individual assignment to view the questions and to edit the content. You can remove, add, or edit questions, choosing from several question collections. ... View more

Achieve offers many options for post-class work to keep students progressing as the content becomes more complex.  Homework Assignments Our titles include a bank of assessments that can be easily assigned through pre-built homework assignments or your own assignments using our easily sortable question library. The interactive homework questions in many titles feature targeted feedback and are available for each core concept in the textbook. Animation and Media Assignments STEM titles in Achieve contain a library of 2D animations, 3D animations, and simulations with accompanying assessments to help students visualize the complex processes they need to understand in this course. These can be assigned as homework, review, or as group work for students to complete.    How are you using these resources in your class? Let us know! ... View more

Using Achieve and iClicker In-Class Whether teaching in-person or online, Achieve has the resources you need to keep students actively engaged during class.   iClicker With Achieve’s seamless integration with iClicker, you can help any student participate—in the classroom or virtually. iClicker’s attendance feature gets students in class, then instructors can choose from flexible polling and quizzing options to engage, check understanding, and get feedback from students in real time. iClicker also allows students to participate using laptops, mobile devices, or iClicker remotes—whichever each student prefers. Additionally, we offer Instructor Activity Guides and book-specific iClicker question slides within Achieve to make the most out of your class time.  Instructor Activity Guides     The guides provide instructors with a structured plan to facilitate an activity that encourages student engagement in both face-to-face and remote learning courses. Each guide lays out for professors the best implementation for each activity and highlights the resources available for use in class, including presentation slides, iClicker questions, and student handouts. The guide displays the activity type, estimated prep and class time, implementation instructions, suggestions for remote implementation where applicable, and Learning Objectives for ease of use. Activity Details: Approximate class time, Implementation effort, and best use case.  Activity Summary and Implementation suggestions for both in person and remote classes. All resources and links to implement the activity.  Resources for the Activity Activities typically include accompanying presentation slides (with iClicker questions) and student worksheets. All items, as well as guidance for best practices for activity use, can be found in the instructor's guide.   Active Lecture Slides These brief, visually interesting slides are designed to hold students’ attention in class with graphics demonstrating key concepts and real-world examples. Each slide deck also contains iClicker questions that can be used during lecture.   Let us know how you’re using Achieve during class this term! ... View more

Using Achieve Pre-Class Activities Achieve has a multitude of features that can be assigned as pre-class, in-class, or post-class work. Here are just a few of the key features we see used best as pre-class work.   Adaptive Quizzing Learning Curve Adaptive Quizzing puts the powerful concept of “self-testing to learn” into action and strategically develops personalized study plans that directly address students’ gaps in knowledge. Adaptive quizzing provides personalized question sets and clear feedback based on each student’s correct and incorrect answers—offering an easy way for students to prepare for class by reviewing the e-book and then assessing their understanding of the key concepts.  Reporting Tools Instructors can use the reporting features of Adaptive Quizzing to evaluate class performance to get a sense of what their class needs to focus on, attuned to the individual needs of each student. Instructors can see how many questions each student answered before reaching the target score, how many students have completed each activity, and how individual students are performing, as well as composite results for the class as a whole. This can help guide how much time is spent in class on certain topics or concepts. Helpful Guidance  Each question includes a topic-specific link that guides students to the e-book so they can use that material to assist them in answering the question correctly. Referencing this additional material doesn't cost students any points. Students can also Get a Hint for fewer points or Show answer for no points. Instant Feedback Students receive instant feedback after each question in Adaptive Quizzing. Not only does this assist with retention, it also corrects them immediately on any misconceptions or mistakes.  Students who are unprepared or who need more help will receive as much practice as they need to master a concept. At any time during an Adaptive Quizzing activity, students can click on links to online instruction for more explanation and examples. This way, students can receive guided help before attending class.    Reading Assignments Reading can be assigned prior to class, ungraded or for points, to help students come prepared.   Animations Most of our titles include a variety of engaging animations, which can be assigned pre-class or post-class. Many animations that match the chapter content are provided with 6–8 assessment questions. These are designed to aid students in connecting their visual understanding with the core concepts in the chapters.    Pre-Class Assignments Each chapter has a 10-question assignment that can be used to check reading comprehension and pre-class preparation. These assignments cover the entire chapter but can be modified and edited to suit professors’ individual needs by editing wording or adding new questions via our question banks.   You can customize your course in a way that works best for your students. Let us know how you use these features of Achieve! ... View more

Introducing Goal Setting and Reflection Surveys in Achieve When Macmillan’s Learning Science team was 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. There are five surveys in Achieve designed to get students to set goals for themselves and reflect on their learning throughout the semester. For each survey you assign, you will receive insights on the strategies students are using, how they think the semester is going, and how you can target interventions and support based on your class.    Our Learning Science team's data suggests not only do students like the surveys, but that using Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys positively impacts student course performance.  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 completing their surveys also complete up to 36% more of their assigned Achieve activities.  Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys help students pay attention to their needs in the course and self-advocate throughout the semester. These surveys can offer you a better sense of what your students are struggling with and help you notice classroom trends.    Learn more about Achieve! ... View more

What’s In Your Achieve Course?  Hello, Instructors! As you and your students continue to learn this term, we want to be sure you’re making the most out of your Achieve course. This series will show you the types of content in your Achieve course.    Learning Path Beyond the platform itself, what sets Achieve apart is the content. In Achieve, content is organized to meet your unique course goals. You can easily see in the learning path which assessments and media resources are aligned for their pedagogical usage: to prepare for class, to be used during class time, and for review after class time.  This allows instructors to provide a high degree of structure to the course work they assign. This benefits all students, but especially those who come into the course less prepared. Although we suggest content for pre-class, in-class, and post-class, feel free to mix and match and make it your own. Arrange material in a way that works best for you and your students.   Interactive E-book The Achieve course is built around the e-book, providing a structured framework of content, media, and assessments for your students. The e-book in Achieve is more than just a flat PDF. The e-book can be accessed directly to be read section by section. The e-book is also included in our adaptive quizzes, allowing students to reference back to sections in the book as they work through formative assessments.    These are a few key features of the e-book: Audio: The Read-Aloud option allows you to listen to the text. You can also fast forward or rewind and change the reading speed.  Font: Easily change the font style or size. You can also select day/night mode or change the line spacing to personalize the reading experience. Highlight and Notes: Select any text to highlight it or add notes. As students work through the book, these notes are compiled into a notebook for them to easily reference later while studying. Animations and Media: Animations play right in line with the text. Self-Assessment: Check your knowledge with in-line answers to the end of section questions.   Which feature of Achieve do you and your students like best? Comment to let us know! ... View more

As winter break approaches and students prepare for final exams and projects, instructors are busy writing and grading those finals and discovering how well students actually understood the material. With the mix of available virtual and in-person courses, the consideration of different types of assessments becomes very complex.  Courses in STEM disciplines often cover a large amount of material that tends to encourage superficial learning instead of the more ideal deep approach to learning. Additionally, STEM courses seem to have a threatening and anxiety-provoking assessment system.  Summative assessment is the assessment of student learning; it is usually an exam, final project or report that provides a score on that student’s performance but rarely offers timely or effective feedback. But these final exams and evaluations are inherently necessary in the framework of our education system. What remains is to learn how to use summative assessment as a learning tool. Consider the ideas in the table below for your own test-taking processes. During the test Collaborative test-taking Pyramid exams Immediate feedback assessment technique Self-corrected exams Prior to return of the test Do-over After the return of the test Highlighting missed material Point-recapture Test analysis   How do you make use of summative assessments? Explore the various types of assessments and strategies for their use in Assessment in the College Classroom.   ... View more