Mastering: Best Practices

1. Mastering:Best Practices Dr. Jonathan Lochamy Georgia Perimeter College

2. Outline I. Course Implementation II. Technique III. Student Tracking

3. Course Implementation:How I use Mastering • Pre-Class Reading Enforced Students take a chapter quiz beforewe cover the chapter in class. • Pre-Class Instruction Students complete 3-5 activity segments before class. Tutorials are the best activities!

4. How others use Mastering • Post-Class Instruction Activities and tutorials can clarify difficult concepts. • Pre-Test Assessment Chapter quizzes and independent test bank can give early warning to student who is about to do poorly. • Blended Approach Some activities before class, some after, and tutorials due by test time.

5. Course Implementation:Activity Selection • Prioritize Activities Tutorials/Coaching >Activities >>>Naked Questions • Determine Time-on-task Using provided estimate, I limit to 45 minutes in a face-to-face class. Longer for Hybrid and On-line.

6. Course Implementation:Grade Impact • Mastering is Homework. Weight this as you would a homework grade. In my class, 30 minutes of activities and a 10-minute quiz are worth 10% of the final grade. • It must be part of the course grade. Ungraded or “bonus” point formats do not see significant student use. Particularly not used by the weak students who need it most.

7. Grade Impact • Give a drop grade. Love your students, love yourself, give them the value of one chapter’s worth of points back at the end of the semester. • Do not take excuses and reopen assignments See that drop grade above? That’s why it is there, for emergency “absences.”

8. Technique:Assignment Settings • First Principle: Homework, not a test. All decisions about assignment settings should be based off this principle. • Second Principle: Teaching, then assessing. The primary goal of Mastering is to accomplish instruction, not assess final progress. Assessment (grading) should be targeted towards formative, not summative.

9. Formative Assessment A formative assessment lets the student know what she does know and doesn’t know, before a test. • exposes misconceptions • targets specific student errors • warns the instructor of train wrecks before-hand

10. Assignment Settings Walkthrough

11. Technique:Question Editing • Some assignments are good, but you dislike one question or part. • Simple Editor allows removal of offending question or part. Allows you to still use the activity. • Don’t spend a lot of time creating your own questions.

12. Question Edit Walkthrough

13. Student Tracking:Just in Time Teaching • Regurgitation of a textbook is boring to you and to students who did the homework. • Gradebook allows you to see where students had no problem (skip) or many problems (cover). • Adapting a lecture like this is called Just in Time Teaching (JITT).

14. JITT Walkthrough

15. Student Tracking:Student Intervention • Students often show up at the midpoint asking, “What can I do to make a better grade?” • Gradebook allows you to target a failing student before the first test. • Color pattern tells more than just looking at total points.

16. Presentation Complete • This concludes the pre-recorded presentation. Please submit your questions through the “Questions” Pane.