Quick start: Mastering student
Updated 18 Jun 2024
This guide covers the steps for students to start working in their course, do assignments, and see their results.
First steps
Create a student account
Register and enroll as a student to sign in to MyLab Pearson products. Use the same account for any Pearson course.
Your instructor provides registration instructions. The instructions have a course invite link and a course ID or program ID to register for your course.
Read how to create an account
Watch how to create an account
Join your course
- Go to MyLab & Mastering.
- Select Sign in to your course.
- Enter your credentials.
- On the My Courses page, select a course name to enter the course.
Check your system requirements
To help make your experience as smooth as possible, our system checks that your browser settings are supported. You may need to adjust one or more settings.
- Find system requirements for your course.
- Turn off pop-up blockers and accept cookies to work in your course.
Work in your course
The Course Home page shows assignments, announcements, and your progress. Any Pearson down-time announcements appear at the top of the page.
Use course communication tools
Instructors can share announcements with the class on the Course Home page. They can also send announcements in email.
Students can share documents with the instructor. Instructors can share documents with the class or choose to share a student's document with the class.
- Select Document Sharing from the course menu.
- To upload files, either:
- Drag one or more files onto the Documents space or into a folder.
- Select Upload, browse to locate the file, then select Open.
Study and learn
Mastering provides features to help you study, practice, and learn.
eTextbook
The eTextbook provides many study resources. You can add highlights, notes, and flashcards in your eTextbook. When available, listen to the audiobook.
Practice and learning resources
Your course may provide one or more of these resources and capabilities.
Dynamic Study Modules — Improve your study retention
Adaptive Follow-Up assignments — Targeted practice when you need it
Learning Catalytics — Classroom participation sessions
Study Area — Study activities, videos, investigations, practice quizzes/texts, links to the eTextbook
AI Study Tools — Get help about assignment or eTextbook content.
Work on assignments
When you open an assignment select an item link to work on its questions.
- One or more chances to answer each question —
Check the grading policy for the assignment to see how many times you can try to answer each question. - Your submitted answers are always saved —
When you do assignments, every answer you submit is saved and can be seen by your instructor. - You cannot change any submitted answer. Finish an unfinished assignment later as long as it's still available.
Enter math expressions and chemical equations
To enter math expressions or chemical equations, select toolbar options for formats and symbols or select 
Keyboard shortcuts to enter answers from your keyboard, which can be faster.
- To enter a numeric value with a unit, abbreviate the units and don't add a period after the unit. Units are case-sensitive. See the recognized units list
- Enter * for the multiplication sign and don't use commas for large numbers like 2648.
- Spaces are not allowed. Use arrow keys to navigate in your answer.
- Arguments of trigonometric functions must be in radians, unless the question tells you to answer in degrees.
- Grading tolerance and significant figures —
For grading tolerance, your numeric answer usually must be within 2% or 3% of the correct answer. For significant figures, use at least 3 digits in your answers. For multiple calculations, keep the significant figures as you work and round only at the end.
Check your results
Select Scores to review all of your Mastering assignment scores. Each item score is usually available as soon as Mastering grades your answers.
- A score can change during the course —
A score can be affected by changes your instructor makes later. Assignment weighting can also impact your total score. - Multiple attempts for a best score —
The best score from a multiple attempt assignment shows on your Scores page after the due date. To see the scores for all of your attempts, open the assignment. - Your score may be temporarily hidden —
Your instructor controls the display of your scores for assignment items, individual assignments, and/or your total score for the course.
See also: AskPearson