Interactive Training Videos

This series of lessons is intended to let you watch and practice some of the primary tasks that you will be performing on a day-to-day basis in Mastering. For each task, you are given the chance to watch a professor walk you through the process and then you are also afforded the chance to "test" yourself on how well you have mastered that skill. These videos were the result of polling of a number of experienced Mastering users and should represent the places where faculty will most benefit from instruction. If you notice that there is a task you are struggling with and it is not covered here (or by one of the How-to Videos), please contact Mastering National Trainer Chris Hess.

1. Registration

This lesson will walk you through and test you on registering for Mastering for the first time.

2. Creating a Course

In this lesson you will watch and practice the three ways to create a course: from scratch, copying a previous course, and copying a publisher-provided pre-built course.

3. Changing Due Dates for an Assignment

In this lesson you will explore how to change due dates and availability of an assignment from within an assignment and also how to accomplish date changes for several assignments at once using on the assignments screen.

4. Modifying the Grading and Presentation Settings

In this lesson you will explore the various options you have for modifying the way a student is graded on a Mastering assignment, as well as examine how you control whether students can view hints and answers. You’ll also look at the various security features you can employ to discourage cheating in Mastering.

5. Selecting Content

In this lesson, we will discuss how to choose the most appropriate content to assign to your students, focusing specifically on some best practices that have been shown to lead to the greatest student learning gains.

6. Helping an Individual Student using the Mastering Gradebook

In this lesson we will explore how you can use the Mastering Gradebook to identify specific areas of trouble for an individual student. This process can be invaluable for narrowing down to the misconception that is most problematic.

7. Assessing Overall Class Performance using the Mastering Gradebook

In this lesson we will explore how you can use the Mastering Gradebook to identify the areas where the class collectively is struggling. If used on a routine basis, this feature can be used to alter your teaching so that you are consistently confronting your students’ misconceptionsand helping them work through them prior to high stakes summative assessments.

8. Using Learning Outcomes in Mastering

In this lesson we will explore how to create your own learning outcomes, as well as use the publisher-provided learning outcomes. This will include how to assess learning outcomes for individual students and the class overall.

9. Exporting the Gradebook

In this lesson we will explore how to export the gradebook from Mastering into a spreadsheet program such as Excel for further manipulation of grades or upload to a learning management system.