Best practices for professors

• 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.
• At the beginning of the semester, assign relatively short assignments, due frequently. Later add more assignments, with a mix of tutorials and other item types.
• Allow unlimited wrong answers for questions 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.
• 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.
• Consider uploading some of your own assignments into Mastering as a Freehand Grader assignment, which students can complete freehand on paper or using a stylus with a tablet or laptop. You can also edit or add items for Mastering standard assignments using the Simple Editor.
• Add Adaptive Follow-Up assignments if they are available for your course, and help students 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 can change 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.
• Students can't edit answers before submitting the assignment —
  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.
• If you use chemical drawing content in your assignments —
  Recommend that students watch the Marvin How Do I? videos. Depending on the assignment content in your course, consider assigning these intro assignment items later as a refresher: "Introduction to Organic Structures" and "Introduction to Organic Mechanisms."
• Make the grading process clear at the beginning of the semester.
• Explain any weighting scheme to your students —
  Students see the effect of weighting on their grades on their Scores page, which is explained to them in the 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 Student Help.)
• For technical issues, remind students that they can search the AskPearson site and contact Pearson Support.
• Students can also use resources such as the eTextbook and Study Area. The eTextbook provides a number of study features. The Pearson+ app for eTextbooks lets students access their downloaded eTextbook on a tablet or smartphone, even when WiFi is unavailable. (The eTextbook was formerly known as eText.)

• See Welcome to the Mastering Gradebook (PDF) for an overview of features.
• Check Use the Gradebook for links to detailed descriptions of what you can see and do with the Gradebook, along with helpful tips.

• Make assignments available on student calendars in advance (at least 2-3 assignments ahead) so students can organize their time.
• Use the time and difficulty information as you select content to create a feasible weekly assignment.
• To help visual learners, assign items with video or animation. Learn more about available item types.
• Compare your students' work with averages; they like to know when they are doing well.
• Use statistics on individual parts and use Diagnostics to catch student misunderstandings quickly and easily. (You can use the Simple Editor to customize a question with a new response.)
• If required by your department or administration, or for your own use, monitor and report learning outcome results.
• Combat student cheating.
• Include items similar to Mastering items in your midterms and finals, so students see that Mastering helps them do better on their exams.
  
• Post test practice sets to help students prepare for their tests.

• Export a copy of student scores from your Gradebook.
• Print or export learning outcomes, if you used Learning Outcomes in your course.
• Consider copying the course for future use.
  To maintain your course assignments for 5 years, create an instructor-use course. Student-use courses usually end in 2 years or less.
• For more details, see At the end of the course.