Best practices for professors

Here are some best practices from experienced professors and instructors who use Modified Mastering.

  • Add announcements to the Course Home page and email the announcements to students.

  • Use the Introduction to Mastering assignment (automatically assigned) as the first assignment in the semester. Keep this assignment available throughout the course so students can refer to it.

    You may want to assign specific items from the introductory assignment twice—once at the start of the term, and then again when students need to review instructions before completing items in a later assignment.

  • At the beginning of the semester, assign relatively short assignments, due frequently.
  • Allow unlimited wrong answers at the beginning of the semester, and encourage students to experiment.
  • To help visual learners, assign items with video or animation. Learn more about available item types.
  • Add more assignments, with a mix of tutorials and other item types.
  • Work through assignments before you assign them to make sure you've introduced the needed concepts in your lectures, and to see how long it takes you to work them.
  • Include a few practice items or extra credit items in every assignment, so that students can practice without worrying about their final score.
  • Add Adaptive Follow-Up assignments if they are available for your course, and help them understand how scoring for Follow-Ups works.
  • Set appropriate grading strategies to support your teaching style.

Before students begin work on assignments, advise them to check system requirements to ensure that their computers are set up properly. Show them where they can find instructions in Mastering Student Help.

If students don't use a supported browser with specified settings, some of their assignment items may not display properly.

The following information helps you prepare students for a successful learning experience through Mastering:

  • Explain what Mastering does and set student expectations.
    • Students' experience with Mastering changes markedly over the term, as they begin to understand how Mastering is helping them learn.
    • Set expectations about online systems. An Internet connection can go down just before assignments are due.

  • Explain to students that they submit their answers one by one. You may allow multiple attempts to get the correct answer, but once they exhaust all attempts, students can't go back to the question to change it. In other words, students can't review and edit answers before submitting the assignment.

  • If you use chemical drawing content with Marvin in your assignments: Make sure students are aware of the resources available to help them work MarvinSketch assignments. In particular, recommend that they watch the Marvin How Do I? videos. Depending on the assignments in your course, you might also want to assign one or both of these items later as a refresher: "Introduction to Organic Structures" and "Introduction to Organic Mechanisms."
  • If you'll be using Virtual Lab items in assignments: Before the course starts, order ISBNs that include Virtual Lab access. If you assign Virtual Lab items after ordering your textbook, let students know they will have to purchase access online from within an assignment.
  • Make the grading process clear at the beginning of the semester.
  • If you apply a weighting scheme to different categories of assignments or to specific assignments, explain the weighting to your students. Students see the effect of weighting on their grades on their Scores page, which is explained to them in the online Student Help and the How to read your scores video. You can access each student's Scores page from the Mastering Gradebook.
  • Go over how students can improve their grades. (Students can see this information in the online Student Help.)
  • Remind students about online Help and the ability to contact Technical Support.
  • Students can also take advantage of resources such as eText and Study Area. The eText can be a helpful, interactive study resource. The Pearson eText app lets students access their eText on a smartphone or tablet, even when WiFi is unavailable.