The Texas Experiment- Vantage Learning Platform

Politics, Power, and Social Transformation

FAVORITE SAGE VANTAGE FEATURES

Features Instructors Love

Features Students Love

Enables Easy, 3-Step Course Creation. Our simple interface enables you to create your course in minutes so you can focus on content. Just enter your course information, select your assignments and grading preferences, and review your settings.

Drives Student Engagement. An evidence-based learning design integrates text content with frequent multimedia activities and learning assessments to facilitate better student preparation, engagement, and learning retention.

• A student dashboard offers easy access to text content and visually tracks progress on assignments and assessments.
• Study tools, including flashcards and note-taking, highlighting, and definition look-up capabilities, give students all they need for class preparation and course success.
• Assignable Knowledge Checks (with helpful hints) provide formative assessments after each major section of text content to reinforce retention of key concepts.
• Critical Thinking Checks and Chapter Quizzes provide summative assessments at the end of each chapter to measure progress and long-term retention.
• Assignable multimedia activities with assessment—including video activities—build critical thinking while consistently engaging students in an interactive application of text content.

Ensures Student Accountability. Auto-graded assignments feed your gradebook while instructor reports complement your ability to track student activity, assignment completion, and learning objective mastery. These real-time analytics provide quick insights into individual and class performance for tailoring course instruction to help you address the needs of struggling students.

Delivers First-day-of-class Access and Flexibility. With our 2-week grace period access, all students can use Vantage on the very first day of class. The flexibility to use Vantage on mobile, desktop, or tablet devices means your dynamic Vantage content will consistently be available to learners any time they need it.

Offers Best-in-class Technical Support and Training. Our personalized support for instructors, students, and LMS administrators facilitates an easy transition to Vantage and the quality service you’ve come to expect from SAGE.

• Customizable Learning Management System (LMS) Integration. Our approach to integration empowers you to drive students to the content you want them to see in your LMS immediately following Single Sign On (SSO). In addition, automatic grade sync and full gradebook integration options can bolster timesaving, streamlined access to all your course content.
• Dedicated Technical Support. We are proud to offer robust technical assistance from our team of SAGE educational technology experts based in New York. Instructors and students can access extended weekday and weekend support via phone, email, and online communication.
• Live and Self-Service Training. Synchronous training sessions are available to every Vantage adopter and complement our full suite of self-service “how-to” tools. Guided walk-throughs of basic and advanced Vantage features and live Q & A discussions empower you to personalize your course design and determine how Vantage can best support your teaching goals.

KEY FEATURES OF THE TEXAS EXPERIMENT: POLITICS, POWER, AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

• Fulfills the competency requirements and learning outcomes required for general education courses.
• Builds relevance through representation by highlighting new population data, with projections forward to 2050, released by the U.S. Census and the Texas State Data Center.
• Offers unrivaled coverage of ideology and social issues, Texas demographic changes, and the rising importance of underrepresented groups in Texas politics.
• Encourages engagement through participation by prompting students to reflect on and discuss their views in every chapter.
• Each chapter begins with a chapter-opening vignette focused on a policy issue that impacts real people. Many of the examples are taken from questions that regularly come up in the classroom like “Why should I vote and get involved in politics?” and “How can I participate in politics and make change?”
• What Can You Do? chapter conclusions provide a way for students to participate in the political process and enact change in the state. This can involve attending government meetings, voting, or joining a local chapter of a political party.