Tips for using Adaptive Follow-Ups

• If you keep the Parent Assignment Title short, the Adaptive Follow-Up title, which is based on the Parent title, will be shorter, too.
• You can use any Category for a Parent assignment, but it's most typical to add a Follow-Up to an assignment given for homework after a lecture. The Follow-Up will automatically be in the Adaptive category.
• The Grading and Presentation Settings for the Parent assignment do not affect the settings for the Adaptive Follow-Up.

As recommended in the Tips that you can open from any Create/Edit Assignment page:

• Select publisher items from the main textbook. Only these items provide necessary information for Mastering's continuously adaptive learning.

  You can, of course, also include My Items, items from supplementary sources, and items from the Introduction to Mastering assignment, but the adaptive learning engine doesn't use student performance on these items to make recommendations for Follow-Up assignments.

• If you have copied an assignment that was created with an earlier edition of your course's textbook, be sure to replace items with the latest published version of each item.
• If you plan to pool the Parent assignment (which gives each student a random subset of items for each pool in the assignment), be sure you have selected enough qualified publisher items to ensure that each student is given at least one such item.
• Mastering alerts you if the Parent assignment doesn't include at least one publisher item from the main text, but not if you remove or edit the content of these critical items (making them My Items) after you add the Adaptive Follow-Up.

  After you have added a Follow-Up, avoid making any changes to the items you have selected.

  (It's OK to make some changes on the Organize Content page. See the next section.)

• If you know of specific items that you want to sequester for later assignments you create, you can add these items to an unscheduled or future assignment. You don't need to take this precaution for Test Bank and Essay items, as they are automatically reserved, and will never be given to a student in a Follow-Up. (Students may be given items that you included in earlier assignments if they need further practice with that material.)
• If you sequester ALL items in a topic or in a chapter, however, a student might be automatically exempt from an Adaptive Follow-Up, even though more practice is needed. If, for example, the adaptive engine recommends only sequestered items or items from the Parent assignment, Mastering does not assign them in the Follow-Up, and the student sees a message about being exempt. (Being exempt does not award points the way testing out does.)

  Important: If you're working in a copied a course, such as a pre-built course or another instructor’s course, and you don’t intend to use all of the copied assignments, be sure to delete the unused assignments so the items in those assignments won’t be sequestered.

• After an Adaptive Follow-Up has been added, avoid removing any items from the Parent assignment.
• As mentioned in the previous section, you should pool the Parent assignment ONLY if at least one unpooled publisher item from the latest published edition appears in the Parent. This is especially true if the assignment contains custom items (My Items) or items from other books/editions.
• Other features for organizing content can be used without hurting adaptive learning. You may want to be aware of the Difficulty and Time estimates at the bottom of the page because many students will need to spend time on both the Parent and the Follow-Up assignment. Consider warning students not to leave the Parent assignment until the last minute. If they rush through it and do poorly, they could face more Follow-Up work than they otherwise might.

• You might want to reconsider the due dates for Parent assignments to allow time for the individual Follow-Up work.
• If, when you select the "Yes!" check box, you see a message that continuously adaptive learning is "coming soon" for the Parent assignment's chapter, check back later, if possible. Once the message no longer appears, the publisher items you selected for the Parent have been enhanced with information that provides data for continuously adaptive learning.

  

• Students have reported being motivated to do well on the Parent assignment when they know they have the opportunity to Test Out with a high score and receive all available points for the Follow-Up, without being given the additional practice.