Adaptive Follow-Up assignments

The Pearson adaptive learning engine adapts to your individual study needs. First, it identifies any weakness in your performance on a prerequisite "parent" assignment and then it selects content for your personalized Follow-Up assignment. Each Adaptive Follow-Up assignment contains one or more question sets. It may take you about 15-20 minutes to complete a question set.

• Questions are similar or related to those you missed in the prerequisite parent assignment or in an earlier question set in the same Adaptive Follow-Up assignment. Some question set items might also address prerequisite topics for the content in the Follow-Up assignment. For example, questions may target a particular math skill or concept that you haven't mastered yet.
• The adaptive learning engine recommends items and assembles question sets from available publisher content. Your instructor cannot choose any items for your Adaptive Follow-Up assignments. The Follow-Up might include questions you completed earlier to refresh your skills or knowledge.
• The adaptive learning engine also "learns" from the performance of all students. The more you and other students work on the prerequisite parent and Adaptive Follow-Up assignment items, the greater the system's ability to recommend appropriate follow-up content. For example, as the system identifies material that is often difficult for some students, it also tracks which Follow-Up items (like Mastering tutorials with hints) seem to best help these students. In addition, the learning engine compares student performance to determine which order of topics may be most beneficial.
• "No Questions Yet" status: You see this status for question sets that follow the question set you're currently working on. Questions for each set are selected based on your most recent answers, allowing the Adaptive Follow-Up to adapt to your most current level of understanding. When you complete all of the questions for a question set so that its status changes from In Progress to Complete, the status of the next question set will change from "No Questions Yet" to "Ready to Start".
• As you complete question sets, you are informed if there are no more recommended publisher items available to create another question set. When this happens, the Adaptive Follow-Up assignment is considered complete and you receive all possible points for the remaining question sets.
• If there are no related publisher items to populate an Adaptive Follow-Up assignment, then you are exempted from this Follow-Up (without any credit gain). This is different from testing out of an Adaptive Follow-Up assignment and gaining full credit for it, as described below.

• Adaptive Follow-Up assignments appear on the Course Home with the  symbol before the assignment name.
• The assignment title ends with “Adaptive Follow-Up”.
• The Adaptive Follow-Up assignment is unavailable (grayed out) until you complete the prerequisite parent assignment listed to the right of the assignment due date on the Course Home.

You can work on the Follow-Up assignment after you have met ANY of the following conditions. (This is different from other assignments, which you can work on as soon as they appear in the course.)

• You complete all items in the prerequisite "parent" assignment. Definition of a completed item
• The due date of the prerequisite assignment has passed, even if you haven't completed all of its items.
• The time limit for the prerequisite assignment has been reached, if it is a timed assignment.

Other availability notes:

• Once an Adaptive Follow-Up assignment becomes available for you to work on, it remains available for practice and study until the course ends.
• Adaptive Follow-Up assignments may only be available for some of your Mastering assignments. (Your instructor can choose whether to add an Adaptive Follow-Up to a particular assignment.) Some courses may not include any Follow-Up assignments.

Your instructor may allow students to test out of an Adaptive Follow-Up. If you do well on the prerequisite "parent" assignment, you receive credit for the Adaptive Follow-Up without needing to work on it.

• Your score on the prerequisite parent assignment must meet or exceed the test-out score listed in the grading policy. If you score just under the test-out score on the parent assignment, Mastering does not round up this score. For example, 89.97% will not meet a test-out score of 90%.
• If you meet the test-out score, you don't need to complete all of the questions in the parent assignment. (To complete a question, you can either submit a correct answer, run out of answer attempts, or choose Give Up.)

The availability of the test-out feature and the minimum score needed on the prerequisite assignment is controlled by your instructor.

To check availability of test out and minimum score needed

1. Open either the prerequisite "parent" assignment's grading policy or the associated Adaptive Follow-Up assignment's grading policy.
2. Look for Adaptive Follow-Up Test-Out Score: x%, where x is the minimum % score you must reach on the prerequisite parent assignment. The test-out score and points you receive for testing out can vary by assignment.

   Don't see “Adaptive Follow-Up Test Out Score: x%”? This means that students cannot test out of the Adaptive Follow-Up for this prerequisite assignment.

How to know if you tested out of the Adaptive Follow-Up

The Adaptive Follow-Up is marked with a check mark to indicate that it's complete on both the course calendar and Assignments list.

When you open an Adaptive Follow-Up after you tested out, it contains a congratulatory message about having tested out and shows the number of points you have received for the Adaptive Follow-Up.

1. From the Mastering Course Home:
   Select an  Adaptive Follow-Up assignment. See the section “How to identify Adaptive Follow-Up assignments” above, if needed. If the link is grayed out and not selectable, see the section “Availability of Adaptive Follow-Ups” above.

   From the completed prerequisite (Parent) assignment:
   Choose Adaptive Follow-Up, whether from the top or bottom () of the page.

2. To check the grading policy, select the Grading Policy link (top right) to open grading information. When you're finished, choose X (top right) to close the grading policy.
3. To review basic details about this kind of assignment, select About Adaptive Follow-Ups (top right). When you’re finished, choose X (top right) to close this information.

   

4. To open an item in the first question set, select a link.
   
5. Select Submit or another option next to Submit for each part question in the item.

   The item may contain one or more part questions (A, B, etc.) with hints and answer feedback. Definition of a completed item

6. Choose Continue (bottom right) or Next (top right) to move on to the next item. Or select Provide Feedback if you noticed an error or have another comment on the item, like for a confusing or overly difficult question.
7. When you reach the end of the last item in the question set, selecting Continue or Next Question Set returns you to the Adaptive Follow-Up assignment summary page, where you can review your score information for items in the completed question set.

   If another question set has been assembled based on your performance: You can proceed to that question set now or you can take a break and return to that question set later.

   Note: If you close the Adaptive Follow-Up now (i.e., after the last item in the question set) instead of selecting Continue or Next Question Set, the status message available on the Assignment Grade page will not be current for the next question set. To remedy this, open this Adaptive Follow-Up again.

8. Complete any remaining question sets in the Adaptive Follow-Up assignment.
   

You can easily open the associated Parent assignment from any Adaptive Follow-Up assignment, as long as the Parent assignment is still available in the course. (As with other assignments, your instructor controls the availability of each Parent assignment.)

1. Select the Parent assignment's title link at the top of an open Adaptive Follow-Up assignment.
   
2. Choose any item link from the Parent assignment, whether to review answers and hints for completed items or to complete any questions you didn't answer before the Parent assignment due date.

When you complete an Adaptive Follow-Up assignment, you can check your item scores or check your assignment score as you would for any other assignment with the following exceptions.

• Mastering Scores page — Look for assignments in the Adaptive category. Once a Follow-Up assignment score appears on the Scores page, it remains available to you through the end of the course. (This is not always true for other assignment scores, which may be hidden by your instructor.)
• The number of Part questions is listed because each part question contributes equally toward your score on a question set. (For more information, see "Details on the scoring of Adaptive Follow-Up assignments" below.) The Assignment Grade page for an Adaptive Follow-Up provides a Parent assignment link so you can easily view its Assignment Grade page.

• Each question set is worth the same number of points in an Adaptive Follow-Up. For example, your Follow-Up assignment may contain two question sets that are worth 5 points each.
• Within a question set, each Part question is worth the same amount. However, the number of items and Part questions per item can vary from question set to question set. Using the above example, if the first question set contains five part questions and the second question set contains four, the part questions in the first question set are actually worth a bit less per question (1.0 point each) than the part questions in the second question set (1.25 points each).
• Your instructor cannot remove an item from an Adaptive Follow-Up assignment. This is different from other assignments because the adaptive learning engine chooses the publisher items for your question sets. If you think you have lost credit unfairly on a flawed publisher item, let your instructor know. He or she can adjust your final grade on that Follow-Up assignment.
• Possible weighting of Adaptive Follow-Up assignments: If your instructor weights your total Mastering score by assignment category, the credit you earn on all Adaptive Follow-Up assignments may contribute the same or a different percentage toward your total Mastering score than Parent assignments (typically homework), quizzes, or tests. More about weighting