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MULTIMEDIA

FOR STUDENTS

Electronic Versions

Discovering the Essential Universe is offered in two electronic versions. One is an Interactive e-Book, available as part of LaunchPad, described below. The other is a PDF-based e-Book from CourseSmart, available through www.coursesmart.com. These options are provided to offer students and instructors flexibility in their use of course materials.

CourseSmart e-Book

Discovering the Essential Universe CourseSmart e-Book offers the complete text in an easy-to-use, flexible format. Students can choose to view the CourseSmart e-Book online or to download it to their computer or a mobile device, such as iPad, iPhone, or Android device. To help students study and mirror the experience of a printed textbook, CourseSmart e-Books feature note-taking, highlighting, and bookmark features.

ONLINE LEARNING OPTIONS

Discovering the Essential Universe supports instructors with a variety of online learning preferences. Its rich array of resources and platforms provides solutions according to each instructor’s teaching method.

LaunchPad: Because Technology Should Never Get in the Way

At W. H. Freeman, we are committed to providing online instructional materials that meet the needs of instructors and students in powerful, yet simple ways—powerful enough to dramatically enhance teaching and learning, yet simple enough to use right away.

We have taken what we’ve learned from thousands of instructors and hundreds of thousands of students to create LaunchPad, a new generation of technology. LaunchPad offers our acclaimed content curated and organized for easy assignment in a breakthrough user interface in which power and simplicity go hand in hand.

Curated LaunchPad Units make class prep a whole lot easier

Combining a curated collection of video, tutorials, animations, projects, multimedia activities and exercises, and e-Book content, LaunchPad’s interactive units give instructors a building block to use as is or as a starting point for their own learning units. An entire unit’s worth of work can be assigned in seconds, drastically saving the amount of time it takes to have the course up and running.

LearningCurve

Powerful adaptive quizzing, a game-like format, direct links to the e-Book, instant feedback, and the promise of better grades make using LearningCurve a no-brainer.
Customized quizzing tailored to the text adapts to students’ responses and provides material at different difficulty levels and topics based on student performance. Students love the simple yet powerful system and instructors can access class reports to help refine lecture content.

Interactive e-Book

The Interactive e-Book is a complete online version of the textbook with easy access to rich multimedia resources that complete student understanding. All text, graphics, tables, boxes, and end-of-chapter resources are included in the e-Book, and the e-Book provides instructors and students with powerful functionality to tailor their course resources to fit their needs.

Quick, intuitive navigation to any section or subsection
Full-text search, including the Glossary and Index
Note-taking feature allows users to place notes at any highlighted text throughout the e-Book.
“Top-note” feature allows users to place a prominent note at the top of the page to provide a more significant alert or reminder.
Text highlighting, in a variety of colors

Astronomy Tutorials

These self-guided, concept-driven experiential walk-throughs engage students in the process of scientific discovery as they make observations, draw conclusions, and apply their knowledge. Astronomy tutorials combine multimedia resources, activities, and quizzes.

Image Map Activities

These activities use figures and photographs from the text to assess key ideas, helping students to develop their visual literacy. Students must click the appropriate section(s) of the image and answer corresponding questions.

Animations, Videos, Interactive Exercises, Flashcards

Other LaunchPad resources highlight key concepts in introductory astronomy.

Assignments for Online Quizzing, Homework, and Self-Study

Instructors can create and assign automatically graded homework and quizzes from the complete test bank, which is preloaded in LaunchPad. All quiz results feed directly into the instructor’s gradebook.

Scientific American Newsfeed

To demonstrate the continued process of science and the exciting new developments in astronomy, the Scientific American Newsfeed delivers regularly updated material from the well-known magazine. Articles, pod-casts, news briefs, and videos on subjects related to astronomy are selected for inclusion by Scientific American’s editors. The newsfeed provides several updates per week, and instructors can archive or assign the content they find most valuable.

Gradebook

The included gradebook quickly and easily allows instructors to look up performance metrics for a whole class, for individual students, and for individual assignments. Having ready access to this information is helpful both in lecture prep and in making office hours more productive and efficient.

FOR INSTRUCTORS

Computerized Test Bank

Thousands of multiple-choice questions are section-referenced. The easy-to-use test bank allows instructors to add, edit, re-sequence, and print questions to suit their needs. The test bank can be downloaded from macmillanhighered.com.

Online Course Materials (Blackboard, Moodle, Desire2Learn, Canvas)

As a service for adopters, we will provide content files in the appropriate online course format, including instructor and student resources for the textbook. The files can be used as is or can be customized to fit specific needs. Prebuilt quizzes, animations, and activities, among other materials, are included.

Classroom Presentation and Interactivity

A set of online lecture presentations created in Power-Point allows instructors to tailor their lectures to suit their own needs using images and notes from the textbook. These presentations are available for download at macmillanhighered.com.

Clicker Questions

Written by Neil Comins, these questions can be used as lecture launchers with or without a classroom response system such as iClicker. Each chapter includes questions relating to common misconceptions, as well as writing questions for instructors who would like to add a writing or class discussion element to their lectures.