What’s New in Mastering|Summer 2012
In our summer release, we are making it even easier for instructors to manage their courses and assignments. Additionally, we updated the software that displays questions to students with high performing software in a new modern design.
Here’s what you can look forward to with the summer release:
New Calendar Feature for Instructors and Students
The Course Home now features a calendar for instructors and students to see upcoming assignments and due dates.
Instructor View:
Instructors can view and move assignments on the calendar with ease. If the due date of an assignment needs to change, instructors can drag the title to the new date:
The due date and availability adjust automatically.
The calendar allows students to see at a glance when an assignment is due. Students can easily move to each month of their semester and quickly see available assignments and due dates.
Student View:
Since a calendar more closely resembles a syllabus, this should minimize the confusion students have about determining an assignment due date.
Faster, Easier Course Creation Options
Copy Course by ID
This new feature streamlines an instructor’s ability to share a course. Instructors can now copy another instructor’s course simply by entering the course ID. Unlike “section instructor” features, where an instructor can use another instructor’s course but not own it, the copied course becomes their own.
The Copy by Course ID feature is ideal for department coordinators or chairpersons responsible for preparing the course curriculum for large-enrollment introductory courses, like Anatomy & Physiology, which are often taught by adjunct faculty. This feature lets the coordinator create one course and make it available to other instructors for easy copying (create once and copy many times).
The instructor obtains the course ID from the course originator. At the Create a New Course screen, the instructor clicks the “Copy another Instructor’s Course” option and enters the course ID:
The instructor can also decide whether to copy the assignment dates or not, providing greater flexibility when copying a course. This option is also now available when they copy one of their own courses.
After selecting the course to copy, the instructor can then continue with course creation as usual, editing the course information as needed.
Instructors choose to make their course(s) available for copying or not. When creating any course, the Enrollment Settings screen is now called Access Settings, and provides the additional option of allowing the course to be copied. By default, the “Unavailable for copying” option is selected. This option can be changed later in a new section on the Course Settings page.
Publisher Assignments now Provided during Course Creation!
During course creation, instructors new to Mastering have an improved workflow for creating a course with a set of assignments that include some of the best content available for the selected title. This creation path allows instructors to quickly set up their courses.
Instructors follow the Create a New Course path. At the last step when the instructor receives the course ID for the newly created course, the option of adding publisher-provided assignments is available.
The Calendar View of the Assignments tab is displayed with the publisher-provided assignments listed on the left. A message provides helpful information about what to do next:
New Assignment Features
Calendar feature for easy scheduling of assignments
The new Calendar View is available as an option on the Assignments tab, allowing the instructor to schedule assignments by dragging and dropping the assignment onto a date.
A popup box opens to show the available from date (default is 7 days before the due date) and the available to date (default is the course end date). Both of these fields are editable by the instructor.
Mouse-over provides a “tool tip” with the assignment full name, availability status, category, and dates.
The List View of assignments is also available.
Viewing Hidden Parts
If an assignment has hidden parts, instructors can now simply click a link to see them. Instructors no longer need to click Hints and Show Answer to ‘complete’ a part to make the hidden part visible.
New “Test” Assignment Category
The new Test assignment category automatically applies the following grading and presentation settings:
· Scores are only visible after the assignment is due
· The item sequence is randomized
· Item titles are hidden
· Students are not allowed to access the assignment between completion and the due date
Improved Content Player
The content player displays items to students and instructors.
New Content Player Window
The Content Player now opens in a new window, providing more space and flexibility. The student can move the window around and now has maximum page size to more easily view items with animations and simulations.
The look of the Content Player has been updated, and the Submit button is clearly differentiated from the other options such as the Hints and the My Answers link.
The Print View is more readable. All of the content is now shown at the standard size (instead of including thumbnail views for some content, such as labeling questions).
Additionally, once a student works through a problem and requests the Print View, all the available hints are open (regardless of whether the student opened hints or not). This view provides a comprehensive study tool for students.
Significant Performance Improvements
Students can submit an answer to a Part and only that Part will reload or refresh. The entire page does not need to redisplay itself. For example, if a student is viewing a movie and answering questions as the movie progresses, the movie no longer requires a restart after the student answers a question.
The “See Score and Provide Feedback” link is now separated into two distinct links.
The “Provide Feedback” link is still available while a student is working through a question:
Students can now access their assignment item scores on the assignment item list page:
Scores Page Refresh
The student Scores page has been updated to make it easier for students to understand their grade and how it is calculated.
Extreme Gradebook Makeover
A more robust gradebook now easily handles large classes with many assignments.
Messaging lets instructors know that the gradebook is loading.
The Gradebook filters have been updated allowing instructors to more easily filter the gradebook by assignment category.
The larger font is easier to read, and mousing over the assignment tab displays a tool tip with the full assignment name, category, due date, and assignment point value.
The default diagnostic charts are now the four most popular charts: Item Score, Item Difficulty, Item Time, and Student Score.
New Answertypes
Answertype is the term used for the types of questions we can ask students. In this release we updated some of our current answertypes and developed two new answertypes and one new content type.
New drawing tools for chemistry
Pearson is partnering with ChemAxon to bring powerful MarvinSketch drawing tools to MasteringChemistry. The new skeletal and mechanism answertypes support the drawing and editing of structures and reactions, with rich atom and bond features and robust answer evaluation.
New content type supported: The MarvinView content tag can display 2D and 3D structure representations and related data. MarvinView is also from ChemAxon – a leader in the drawing and display of complex chemical structures.
Updated Vocabulary Tool
We updated our vocabulary tool to allow multiple words per sentence, reuse of words, and better randomization. Additionally, we added a sentence-based drag and drop feature. This feature supports questions where the student is required to drag sentences into a particular order to create a comprehensive paragraph of information.
Scientific Notation
We added a scientific notation button to the templates on the math palette. Students can now enter a response that requires ‘10x‘ with one click.
New Titles
The following table lists new titles that will be live during the summer timeframe and class test titles.
MasteringA&P / Martini / Bartholomew Essentials of Anatomy & Physiology, 6eMartini / Ober Visual Essentials of Anatomy & Physiology, 1e
Wood Laboratory Manual for Anatomy & Physiology, 5e (Cat, Pig, and Main)
Silverthorn Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach, 6e
Garrett, Get Ready for A&P 3e (secondary book in Mastering)
MasteringAstronomy / None
MasteringBiology / None
MasteringChemistry / Wade’s Organic Chemistry, 8e
Engel / Reid’s Physical Chemistry, 3e
Hill / Kolb’s Chemistry for Changing Times, 13e
McMurry / Ballantine / Hoeger / Peterson’s Fundamentals of General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry, 7e
MasteringEngineering / Hibbeler’s Engineering Mechanics: Statics, 13e
Hibbeler’s Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics, 13e
Hibbeler’s Engineering Mechanics: Statics & Dynamics, 13e
Zekavat’s Electrical Engineering: Concepts and Applications, 1e
MasteringEnvironmentalScience / None
MasteringGenetics / None
MasteringGeography / Rubenstein / Renwick / Dahlman Introduction to Contemporary Geography, 1e
Knox / Marston Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context, 6e
Rubenstein Contemporary Human Geography, 2e
Christopherson Elemental Geosystems, 7e
MasteringGeology / Lutgens / Tarbuck Essentials of Geology, 11e
Lutgens / Tarbuck Foundations of Earth Science, 6e
MasteringMicrobiology / None
MasteringPhysics / None
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