Section instructors vs teaching assistants

Updated 19 Feb 2024

Mastering provides the section instructor and teaching assistant roles to help you manage a course. These roles apply to a Mastering course, including for a course paired with an LMS. Instructor Help for using Mastering with your LMS

Both section instructors and teaching assistants can automatically see answers to questions available in the course. This capability cannot be removed, even if you remove the Assignments privilege.

This role requires that the individual register for your course with a section instructor access code, regardless of whether the person has a Pearson Educator account or a Section Instructor account.

Section instructors are usually staff at your institution

  • Instructor colleagues who co-teach, teach other sections, or assist with your course
  • Graduate assistants/TAs
  • Department coordinators who help set up courses
  • Coordinators or instructors who want to copy assignments from one of your courses

Section instructors receive some course privileges automatically, including the ability to see grades and correct answers. Depending on their expected tasks in the course, you may need to add or remove specific course privileges.

  • An educator can have a Pearson educator account and be a section instructor in another instructor’s course.
  • Or, an individual can create or use a Pearson section instructor account to register for the course with a section instructor code.
  • Educators should NEVER use their educator account to also enroll in a course as a student. This can cause issues with your educator account. (Instead, create a different student account.)

Instructor Resources — When available in a course, Instructor Resources require either a Pearson educator account or a section instructor account. (These resources are NOT viewable by students or students who have been promoted to teaching assistant.)

For instructor colleagues to become section instructors — See Section instructors for a Mastering course.

These can be graduate students who help the instructor with some tasks in the Mastering course. For example, they might be tutors or accessibility assistants.

  • The student must be enrolled in the course.
  • The course owner can use a setting to either promote the student to teaching assistant or change their role back to that of a student. (A student can have only one of these roles at a time.)

    Be cautious about promoting a student account created and used by another instructor. Instructors who enroll as a student must create a different Pearson username (the same password is okay) for their student identity. Otherwise, the instructor account will develop issues!

  • A student can be a teaching assistant in one Mastering course and a student in another course. (The teaching assistant role is assigned within an individual course.)
  • A student or teaching assistant account cannot be used to become either a Pearson section instructor or educator role.

For students to become teaching assistants — See Promote a student to teaching assistant.