LaunchPad provides you with all the features of a big book at an affordable price. Free when packaged with the book and developed with feedback from instructors and students, LaunchPad for The Making of the West contains five unique skill-building features including primary sources, Contrasting Views (two or more related documents), Seeing History (visual analysis), Taking Measure (quantitative analysis) and Terms of History (such as civilization, renaissance, enlightenment, and globalization), plus LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool designed to get students to read before they come to class.

LearningCurve ensures students come to class prepared. Tired of your students not reading the textbook? Would you like to know what they read and how much they understood—BEFORE they come to class? Assign LearningCurve, the adaptive learning tool created for your survey textbook in LaunchPad, and the system’s analytics will show how your students are doing with the reading so that you can adapt your class as needed. Each chapter-based LearningCurve activity gives students multiple chances to understand key concepts, return to the narrative textbook if they need to reread, and answer questions correctly. Over 90% of students report satisfaction with LearningCurve's fun and accessible game-like interface. LearningCurve appeals to students so that they engage with the textbook, and it helps you to know what they know before class begins.

A range of options offers convenience and value. In addition to the standard bound textbook, this edition is also available in convenient, discount-priced loose-leaf and PDF formats and in an interactive e-book format in the text’s dedicated version of LaunchPad, with all accompanying study resources fully integrated. LaunchPad is a complete course’s worth of material in a course space that makes everything assignable and assessable—and all for free when packaged with the textbook.