Features

New to This Edition

2024 Updates - New/updated Achieve features and resources are available for this title:

• New content modules on test-taking and study strategies, mental health, and learning science 
• The Summer 2024 Digital Update introduces three new instructor activity guides designed to reinforce and expand upon the skills in Achieve’s goal-setting and reflection surveys, alongside an instructor guide on how to use the survey results to engage students in meaningful conversations about their goals.
• The Fall 2024 Digital Update introduces a module featuring video activities focused on the benefits and limitations of AI and student success, fostering awareness and ethical considerations around AI use.

You can access this new content through your existing Achieve course — no need to create a new one.

New! Achieve courseware for Understanding Your College Experience sets the standard for driving student learning in your college success  course with powerful learning content, engaging activities, and actionable insights and analytics. Achieve brings together an interactive e-textbook, LearningCurve adaptive quizzing and other assessments and activities, plus extensive instructor resources–all within a new, enhanced technology platform carefully built over the past five years. In order to support students’ self-regulated learning and success, Achieve includes Goal-setting and Reflection Surveys. This series of quick, actionable pre-built surveys is designed to get students to set goals for themselves and reflect on their learning throughout the semester.

• An increased emphasis on career development and accessing career opportunities. This third edition empowers students to access the information and resources they’ll need to make their college experience fulfilling and meaningful, make good choices, and set themselves on a successful career path.

• Chapter 1 now spotlights career coverage right up front, including a discussion of career pathways and a subsection on how self-understanding enables career exploration.
• Each chapter includes a new "Develop Your Career Story" activity, which empowers students to develop their professional selves and access career opportunities. These activities help to scaffold the often-difficult tasks students are asked to do when writing resumes or going on interviews, such as reporting on their strengths or weaknesses, summarizing their skills and interests, or describing a time they overcame adversity. Each activity provides students with a key building block to their professional portfolio, so that by the end of Chapter 12, students will have worked toward developing the confidence and skills to get the most out of their career center resources, land an internship, and pursue a successful career.

• A fully redesigned opener that begins each chapter. Openers touch on each of the three main areas that are important to students—college, life, and career—and spotlight concrete ways that upcoming material is relevant and useful. Each opener features:

• A colorful, full-page photo
• An "In this chapter…" section that highlights chapter coverage and includes reflection questions to help students connect with the chapter topics
• Interesting statistics on both academics and the workplace, as well as an inspirational quote about life, perseverance, and the human experience.

• New Midterm Check-In feature. This new feature, which is located immediately after Chapter 6 (roughly in the middle of the term), is designed to help students stay on track and recognize the necessary interventions they may need to take to finish the term successfully. On the first page of the feature, students receive tips to help them finish strong, and on the second page, they complete specific activities based on these tips to set themselves up for success.
• Key content updates keep this edition current, engaging, and relatable for students. Specific updates include the following:

• A reorganized section on time-management techniques in Chapter 3, plus new coverage of locus of control, the importance of attending college now rather than later, and an expanded discussion of working versus borrowing.
• A revised and expanded "Become Engaged in Learning" section in Chapter 5 that includes a new assessment asking students to reflect on their level of engagement in learning.
• An expanded section on previewing in Chapter 6, which includes a new Table 6.1 that helps students estimate how long their reading will take.
• A new discrete subsection in Chapter 8 on how to reduce the likelihood of problems with academic honesty.
• A retitled Chapter 9 (now "Developing Information Literacy and Communication Skills") that better emphasizes the two main topics being addressed in the chapter.
• New illustrative photos and earlier examples of how students use critical thinking in their everyday lives in Chapter 10, which help to demystify an otherwise abstract concept.
• New wellness coverage in Chapter 11 on prescription drugs, vaping, and anxiety; and new and updated diversity coverage on nationality and citizenship, sex and gender, and microaggressions.

Updated sections in Chapter 12 on the characteristics of today’s economy, developing the right mindset, planning for your career, and marketability