Assign astronomy self-guided tutorials (Mastering Astronomy)
Updated 29 Aug 2024
Some Mastering Astronomy courses provide self-guided tutorials with animations, interactive activities, and quizzes to help students practice and learn important astronomy concepts.
- Accessibility — Astronomy self-guided tutorials are screen reader and keyboard accessible.
- "Self-guided" — These tutorials are called "self-guided" because they have their own internal navigation outside of Mastering.
The same astronomy self-guided tutorials available for assignment are also available to students for independent study in the Study Area (accessible from the course menu).
- Study Area tutorials are for learning and practice — Students can open and complete these interactive astronomy tutorials an unlimited number of times from the Study Area. No work or score is recorded. Students do not see the follow-up part questions that appear when these tutorial items are assigned.
- Assigned tutorials provide graded follow-up questions — When you assign a self-guided tutorial, students complete its item part questions after they step through the tutorial. While Mastering tracks student scores and work on each part question (Part A, B, etc.) in these items, student work on the learning activities within each tutorial is not tracked. How to set a point value for an assigned item
- As you search the Item Library or select content for an assignment, set Chapter (top) to Self-Guided Tutorials.
To clear any other active search filters from your last search, select Clear All next to Selected Filters.
- Preview a tutorial item and select its check box to assign it.
Consider assigning one astronomy tutorial item per assignment. Each tutorial might take about 45-60 min. (Please disregard the provided time and difficulty estimates for these items. The estimated times are overly low because the former tutorial technology was not trackable.)
- Continue creating or editing the assignment, including its Organization, Outcomes, and Dates.
Publisher-provided learning outcomes are available for the astronomy tutorials, but Adaptive Follow-Ups are not.
- Select Study Area from the course menu. The Study Area opens in a new window or tab.
- Select Self-Guided Tutorials.
- Open a tutorial by selecting its name, such as Motion and Gravity.
As with all standard items available from the Item Library, Mastering tracks student scores and work for each part question in items that contain an astronomy self-guided tutorial. (Student work on the learning activities within each tutorial is not tracked.)
Either select Mastering Gradebook from your LMS course. You can also select the Gradebook or Assignment links from the Mastering Course Home. More about using the Gradebook
Individual student scores — Select a student name to see all of the student's grades on the Scores for Student_name page. Select any linked score to see the Assignment Grade page, which provides links to the Item Work page.
Step-by-step student work — On the Item Work page, you can see the student's work for each Mastering assignment item (including time spent, wrong answers, hints requested, and hints worked).
From the Items area of the assignment Overview page, select an item title to see class answer details for its part questions. Select Show Usage Statistics and/or Show System Comparison to view answering results for completed items in your class and to compare with other students worldwide.
Student Help provides these instructions about how to work astronomy self-guided tutorials.