I have been a Nutrition, Culinary Arts and Health Education instructor at Shelton State Community College for 10 years. I use MindTap for Understanding Nutrition to teach class sections in three different formats—classroom, online and hybrid. While I'm always used the Understanding Nutrition text for my classes, I admit that I was hesitant to add the MindTap component due to my past experience using other digital learning tools. I finally took the leap in 2013 in hopes of better addressing two instructional concerns: keeping content consistent across all sections and teaching formats, and challenging students to dig deeper into concepts to apply them to real-life scenarios.

Today, I wish I'd never waited because incorporating MindTap has been a win-win for myself and students. Not only are content and learning objectives more consistent across classes, but student outcomes and engagement rates are higher—something I credits to the interactive features and additional learning opportunities within MindTap. One of my favorite MindTap features is the Diet and Wellness Plus application, or what I call a "game-changer" for my diet analysis project. Using the Diet and Wellness Plus feature, students can more thoroughly interpret and apply findings from their personal results to see short- and long-term effects. On top of my students' successes, my grading has been streamlined to cut out stacks of paper and save time.