Learning Center Features for Educators

Acclaimed Content

At Townsend Press, we know Developmental English, Reading, and Language Arts. They’re our specialty! That focus makes our materials the clearest, most practical, and most student-friendly in the marketplace. It’s why more than a million students and tens of thousands educators rely on Townsend Press for their developmental classes. The Learning Center brings our acclaimed content to the web. With thousands of interactive assignments that teach reading, vocabulary, and grammar skills, the Learning Center helps students learn the language skills needed to succeed in the classroom and beyond. Integrated with our bestselling texts and eBooks, the Learning Center can be a digital supplement to—or a versatile centerpiece for—your developmental or Language Arts classes.

Integrated Mastery Tests

Concepts taught in the Learning Center are reinforced by mastery tests. Carefully written by our editors and authors—not outsourced to production teams unfamiliar with teaching—these tests cover skills central to Developmental English and Reading classes. Results are immediately available, allowing students to see how they are doing. In addition, our mastery tests are also instructive. They both assess students’ growing understanding of a skill and provide commentary that teaches.

Plus Premium Content—New!

Looking to transition to a paperless or a blended text/digital classroom? With our subscription-based Plus programs, you can. Featuring eBooks, digital assignments, mastery tests, and a teacher-friendly content management system, Plus brings the power of our acclaimed texts right to students’ tablets, computers, or smartphones. Click below to learn more.

Electronic Supplements

The Learning Center hosts a wide range of valuable supplements for educators using Townsend Press materials in class. These resources are available 24–7 and include Instructor Manuals/Test Banks and PowerPoint files for the Ten Steps Series, the Vocabulary Series, and our combined reading-writing texts. The Learning Center also features Study Guides for all of our paperbacks. There are even Blackboard and Moodle resources for many of our textbooks—all available free of charge to instructors.

Site Coordinator—New!

Upon request and approval, Townsend Press can assign new administrative controls to a teacher or faculty member at your institution. This person will be your Site Coordinator and have the ability to create and edit accounts, make and manage classes, monitor subscriptions, and oversee use of the entire Learning Center at your institution. Get details here. Your college, school, or program must be a customer of Townsend Press in order to have a Site Coordinator. E-mail us at cs@townsendpress.com if you are interested in this feature.

Exclusive Web Resources

The Learning Center features exclusive new web-only content from Townsend Press for use in the classroom. This currently includes multimedia/video lessons, alternate readings/essays for our textbooks, a forthcoming eBook library, and new writing assignments. These ever-expanding offerings give educators who use the Learning Center a range of new materials for individual or class assignments.

Free Audiobooks

The Bluford Series is a nationally-recognized collection of young adult novels that have helped millions discover the joy of reading. Now educators can access free audiobooks of all 20 novels inside the Learning Center! Available for live streaming or downloading, these audiobooks can spark the love of reading in your students—or support striving readers who may WANT to read the Bluford Series but lack the skills to do so. With your instructor account, you can access them today.

Customizable Settings

The Learning Center is a flexible resource, making it suitable for any educational context or instructional approach. With a few simple mouse-clicks, instructors can configure assignments for individual or group instruction. Preferences can be set to present content as a traditional textbook lesson or, instead, as a practice lab for students to work on specific skills. You can easily configure assignments to work as a supplement for a particular book, or you can focus on particular subject areas you wish to teach (main ideas, inferences, etc.). Individual assignments can also be set to show or hide answer explanations or to even “shuffle” items to deter cheating. In short, the Learning Center can be tailored to fit your needs.

Online Assessments

Instructors have access to electronic editions of our popular College Reading Tests and Vocabulary Placement Test in the Learning Center. Free of charge to students and educators, these tests can be used to assess students’ skills and to guide classroom instruction. Test results are available instantly, providing specific information on students’ skills so you can tailor lessons to students’ needs. These tests are also tightly integrated with our instructional content and will even help you select the most instructionally-appropriate materials in the Learning Center for your classes. Because our College Reading Tests exist in multiple editions, instructors can use them as a diagnostic/placement test or as an exit exam for your developmental college students. The choice is yours!

Score and Progress Reporting

With the Learning Center, your students’ scores and progress are always at your fingertips. With a few clicks, you can view an individual student’s progress, the amount of time he/she spent working, and the scores for his/her work. You can also view results for your classes and, if you’d like, export results for use in other programs.