Macmillan Learning’s Story
Discover how Macmillan Learning's community enhances learning courses through innovative community-powered peer learning and networking.
Summary
Macmillan Learning is a privately held, family-owned company that inspires what’s possible for every learner. Focused on supporting higher education instructors and institutions, Macmillan Learning delivers meaningful content, innovative technologies, and engaging learning experiences that help students of all backgrounds succeed. With the launch of a professional development offering supported by a Khoros-powered community, Macmillan Learning is helping educators upskill and stay connected in the era of AI in the classroom.
By integrating Khoros Communities into its course experience, Macmillan Learning successfully piloted a new revenue-generating business model, drove engagement, and built a scalable foundation for peer-to-peer professional development.
COMMUNITY SCALE
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11 %
of total companywide community page views (2024)
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89 %
of content interactions (Kudos) originated from Macmillan Learning’s community, also known as the Institute at Macmillan Learning (2024)
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12 %
engagement rate on course community content (2024)
BUSINESS OUTCOMES
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94.6 %
of participants were new customers (2024)
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58.8 %
NPS from course completers (2024)
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99.1 %
retention rate (2024)
"Our offering, the Institute at Macmillan Learning, created accountability community experiences alongside the course content, supporting participants as they upskill to meet key professional challenges in real time.”
— Symphonie Swift, Product Marketing Manager at Macmillan Learning
About Macmillan Learning
Macmillan Learning is a mission-driven educational content company committed to improving lives through learning. With a presence in colleges and universities across North America, Macmillan Learning provides instructors and students with tools designed to inspire achievement. From groundbreaking digital products to inclusive curriculum resources, the company is focused on shaping a more effective and engaging future for education.
Rationale for change / Business use case
Macmillan Learning identified a need to support instructors facing emerging classroom challenges, particularly in response to AI technologies. With internal marketing and communications teams aligned, the company launched a pilot offering—Teaching with Generative AI: A Course for Educators—through its new professional development arm, the Institute at Macmillan Learning. To enhance learning and foster connection, the course was accompanied by a closed group hub community on Khoros.
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
“Unlike other professional development offerings out there, we developed not only a best-in-class course, but were able to complement it with a best-in-class community, giving our customers what they were looking for.”
Symphonie Swift, Product Marketing Manager at Macmillan Learning
“Thanks to the available nodes within Khoros, we were able to create a discussion forum, Q&A, resource library (tkb) and a designated space for course highlights (blog), all easily accessible for participants in the course.”
Alexis Brown
Symphonie Swift, Product Marketing Manager at Macmillan Learning
COMMUNITY JOURNEY
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Inception
Inception
In May 2024, Macmillan Learning launched its first professional development course with an integrated Khoros-powered community experience. Built within a closed group hub, the community was designed to facilitate peer-to-peer learning, accountability, and deeper engagement among participants. The team created dedicated nodes for discussion threads, Q&A, a resource library, and weekly course highlight blogs—all structured to be intuitive and easy to navigate.
Technology: Khoros’ closed group hub functionality made it easy to organize content for a course-based community. Discussion threads encouraged easy assignment sharing and peer feedback, while the blog format enabled the Macmillan team to surface key group takeaways and maintain momentum across the cohort.
Lessons learned
Peer interaction fuels participation
Peer interaction fuels participation
The ability to easily engage through assignments, replies, and kudos created a culture of accountability and learning within the community.
Community as a business enabler
Community as a business enabler
The success of the Khoros-powered Institute community proved that Macmillan could expand into new markets and offer professional development as a paid service.
Structure supports scale
Structure supports scale
Clear organization using Khoros’ nodes — discussion, Q&A, TKB, and blog — made it easy for new users to find what they needed and stay active throughout the course.
Results
Macmillan Learning’s first-ever professional development course with a companion community drove both engagement and business validation, quickly becoming one of the company’s top-performing communities.
“Through this process–and largely due to the success of the accountability community in Khoros–we were able to validate the idea and demonstrate its potential to generate revenue.”
— Symphonie Swift, Product Marketing Manager at Macmillan Learning
Today, Macmillan Learning’s Institute is more than a pilot — it’s a validated business model powered by Khoros Communities. The company now looks ahead to scaling future offerings, expanding reach to new customer segments, and continuing to make professional development more interactive, supportive, and impactful.
11% of all Macmillan Learning community page views
Nearly 12% engagement rate
94.6% new customers
99.1% retention rate
58.8% NPS from course completers
89% of all community content interactions came from the Institute community
Why Khoros Community software
Macmillan Learning has long relied on Khoros to host its online communities and knew it would be the right platform to support a new kind of engagement: one tied directly to a professional development course. The intuitive layout, modular design, and group hub functionality made it easy to create a structured space for discussion, feedback, and shared learning. Most importantly, Khoros helped transform a content delivery mechanism into a truly collaborative experience.
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Community engagement and content types
Macmillan Learning is able to cultivate two-way dialogue with members, as well as use a host of built-in styles to fuel interaction, including blogs, discussion forums, Q&A, ideas, and private messages.
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Unmatched expertise
Khoros provides the most modern community architecture with the longest history of enterprise-level scale, security, configurability, and uptime.