MasteringMastering

To improved results

At Pearson our mission is to help students learn. One way we pursue this mission is through personalised learning programs such as Mastering.

Mastering is the leading online homework, tutorial, and assessment product designed with a single purpose in mind: to improve the academic success of science and engineering students, one student at a time. And because Mastering comes from Pearson, you can be confident you have an experienced partner committed to you and your students’ success...every step of the way.

With over 2 million students using Mastering in 2012, Pearson is committed to helping students in the sciences and engineering succeed both academically and in their careers.

1

‘It is a good study tool in all, with easy to grasp concepts made easier by the interactive design of the program. I would both recommend and use it again. – Joshua Page, Student, Edith Cowan University

To improved student results through personalised learning

“The explanation of why the answer to a question was right or wrong helped heaps.” Amy French, Student, MasteringA&P user, Monash University

Conceived to emulate the office-hour experience

Mastering was conceived to emulate the one-on-one office hour experience, which is often cited as the most effective way to help students understand course material.

Through specific wrong-answer feedback, Socratic and declarative hints, and with the addition of new learning features, Mastering is enhancing personalised coaching for each student.

Mastering: Now even more personalised* NEW! Adaptive Follow Up is Mastering’s assignment type that provides each student with personalised homework that covers the topics and core pre-requisites struggled with most in your homework.

NEW! Dynamic Study Modules enable students to practice science on their own in the areas needed most in order to improve performance in the course.

See pages 7–8 for details. *Available for select Pearson textbooks.

2

Mastering helps students prepare for assessments

Data-supported evidence of effectiveness

3

Data-supported evidence of Mastering’s effectiveness

MyPsychLab has already been successful in transferring our approach to lecturing from a tradition, information transmission model, t thinking about how to use lectures to engage students in more advanced discussion of the topics, having already mastered the foundational concepts through their online learning activities

—Wendy McKenzie, MyPsychLab, Monash University’

0

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

MEA

N M

Q G

RA

DE

(%)

WEEKLY CONTENT

Macro

molecu

lesCell

s

Enzy

mes &

resp

iratio

n

DNA and c

hrom

osom

es

Mitosis

, meio

sis

Mende

lism

Human

gene

tics

Plant

dive

rsity

Endo

symbio

sis

Animal

diver

sity

Evolu

tion

Ecolo

gy

10

20

without MasteringBiology 2007 with MasteringBiology 2008

Weekly miniquiz mark (mean standard error)

Effectiveness

The positive impact of Mastering on student success

Rich metadata reports, utilising data gathered by Mastering, inform our authors and editorial teams about the quality of our printed content and ways to improve it.

For example, for a test bank question Mastering provides advice on the effectiveness of distracters, and gives useful information on an item’s difficulty level using an item response model. This type of targeted information helps our authors make content decisions efficiently and accurately.

More Students Earned As and Bs, University of Kentucky, MasteringChemistry®

Mastering data enhances our print products

4

40%

45%

35%

30%

20%

25%

15%

10%

5%

0%

PERC

ENT

OF

STU

DEN

TS

GRADE

A B C D F W D/F/W

2009: Non-Pearson textand homework system

2010: Pearson text and MasteringChemistry

Consistent use of the online tutorials throughout the semester seems to be linked to high performance in the course’

—Jo Devine, MasteringEngineering, USQ

NEW! Publisher Assignments

Pre-built Courses

NEW! Calendar Features

Easy to get started and easy to use

5

Mastering provides a rich and flexible set of pre-built courses and assignments to get you started quickly. Use them as is or customise to fit your needs.

When creating a course, instructors now have the option of copying a complete set of pre-built assignments for each chapter, containing the most frequently assigned questions in a “best of ” homework assignment, curated by experienced Mastering users.

Choose from a set of pre-built model courses to use as a starting point for your own course. Pre-built courses have been:

• Created by educators experienced in using Mastering.

• Pre-populated with recommended assignments or to be used stand-alone.

• Designed to go with your Pearson textbook.

The Course Home default page now features a Calendar View displaying upcoming assignments and due dates.

• Instructors can schedule assignments by dragging and dropping the assignment onto a date in the calendar. If the due date of an assignment needs to change, instructors can drag the assignment to the new due date and change the “available from and to dates” accordingly.

• The calendar view gives students a syllabus-style overview of due dates, making it easy to see all assignments due in a given month.

Easy to get started and use

NEW! Items Flagged to Enable Easy Updating!

Content you can count on

6

The Mastering item library is continually improving due to the dynamic nature of its problems, resulting in content that is driven by student performance. Each problem is thoroughly analysed by reviewing data (including wrong answers, time to completion, and hints used) generated through classroom use with real students. We make corrections to improve problems that have ambiguous answer choices, ineffectual detractors, or tricky language and continue to strengthen each problem through ongoing review of the data generated by real student responses.

Assignable Problem Types in Mastering*

*Not all disciplines have all problem types

• Tutorials: Multi-part items with hints and feedback

• Reading Questions: Questions to assess comprehension of your textbook content

• Test Bank: Single-part items from your textbook

• Coaching Activities: Interactive exercises with hints and/or feedback

• Activities: Multi-part items with animations

• End-of-Chapter: Single- and multi-part items from your textbook

• Lab: Laboratory activities and assessment

• My Items: Imported items, edited publisher items, or user-created items

Designed to help students where they need it most, the Adaptive Follow-Up Assignments give students individual help on topics they struggle with in your homework.

Pick the grading, length and due date settings and Mastering will do the rest.

Check the Gradebook for scores and details on each student’s work.

NEW! Adaptive Follow-Up* Assignment Type

How it works:1. You set the grading settings for the Adaptive

Follow-up Assignment.

2. Once the student completes your assigned homework, the adaptive engine selects the best items for the Adaptive Follow-Up Assignment, based on the student’s performance on your homework, including any core pre-requisite topics.

3. The Adaptive Follow-Up Assignment is broken into sets of questions so that later sets adapt based on the student’s performance on earlier sets; all sets target the gaps in each student’s understanding.

Emulate the office-hour experienceA core mission of Mastering is to emulate the one-on-one office hour experience. With our new learning features, Mastering offers more personalised learning to each student.

Adaptive Follow-up

*Available for selected titles only. Contact your Pearson Education Consultant for details.

Added Personalization

NEW! Self-Study Modules*

How it works:1. Students receive an initial

set of questions, with a unique answer format that asks them to indicate how confident they are about the answer.

2. After answering each set, students review learning material that is taken directly from the textbook and is associated with each question.

3. Once students review the learning material, they are presented with a new set of questions. Students cycle through this dynamic process of test-learn-retest until they achieve mastery of the textbook material.

*Available for selected titles only. Contact your Pearson Education Consultant for details.

8

Dynamic Study Modules

Dynamic Study Modules in Mastering help students quickly and effectively learn the information they need to know to be more successful on their tests, quizzes and exams.

Created to allow students to study on their own, this dynamic solution ensures your students are better prepared to achieve higher scores on their tests and exams.

The Gradebook records all scores for automatically graded assignments.

• Shades of red highlight struggling students and challenging assignments.

Diagnostics provide unique insight into class and student performance. With a single click, charts summarise the most difficult problems, vulnerable students, grade distribution, and score improvement over the duration of the course.

• The problems you select for an assignment are tagged to publisher-provided learning outcomes.

• You can also add your own learning outcomes and associate those with the assignment content.

• You can now track student performance against the publisher-provided learning outcomes and your own learning outcomes— both at the individual student and class level.

Publisher-provided Learning Outcomes

Gradebook

9

Data you can use

Customer SupportCan’t find the answer to your question? We’re here to help. Contact 24/7 Support:

Call us: 1-888-547-4415 Mon–Fri, 8 am–8 pm (Eastern Time, US and Canada)

10

Experienced partner

Teacher Talks: Ideas that Inspire Teacher Talks are inspirational speeches from some of the world’s best educators. Designed to energise the leaders on the front lines of our educational system, these videos deliver ideas on how to be more effective teachers.

Mastering Leadership Conference The Mastering Leadership Conference brings faculty together to support innovation and excellence in teaching across science. It creates a supportive network for exploring new facets of teaching and learning, in using the Mastering platform specifically and technology in general.

Online Conference Designed for both experienced instructors and those new to Mastering, Pearson Education’s Speaking About Mastering online conferences are educational, illuminating, and full of insider tips and information on how to get the most out of Mastering.

Make Learning Part of the Grade This publication shares results and best practices of using Mastering in the classroom.

*Access all these community resources from the Product Info > In the News tab of any Mastering website.

Faculty Advisors Offer Peer-to-Peer Assistance Faculty Advisors are college instructors experienced in teaching with Mastering and available to share their instructional strategies using Mastering with you.

• Ask an Expert From within your course in Mastering, you can quickly complete a short form and send a question to experienced Mastering users (Faculty Advisors).

Building a Community*

Providing Support

© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. MAST2554/0113

MasteringNutrition™

MasteringOceanography™

Word cloud derived from Data-supported evidence of Mastering’s positive impact on teaching and learning, 2013