Mastering default grading is designed to reward honest work. Statistically, students who use hints when they need them get higher final grades even when professors charge a penalty for opening hints. In spring 2013, Barron added MasteringChemistry prelecture homework assignments: short, untimed assignments due before lecture designed to help increase student awareness about new topics and to identify student misconceptions and areas of misunderstanding.

Understanding the Context

Barron tells students it is okay to be confused after doing the homework because the concepts will become clear during class. My absolute favorite part of MasteringA&P was the Interactive Physiology Tutorial. These tutorials deconstructed each subject down to its foundation and then, layer by layer, taught the physiology of the systems in a way that made it easy to understand. Watching the tutorials made the human body come alive and helped me understand the topic in a way that just reading a book or looking at ...

Key Insights

Key Results Increasing the use of MasteringBiology enabled more active learning opportunities, promoted more-eficient lectures and ofice hours, and resulted in higher exam scores. Previously known as the twiddle or squiggly, this character’s informal usage means “about” or “approximately.” It also functions as an accent mark in Portuguese and Spanish words. If you see an equal sign crossed out, it means that the equal sign doesn’t apply—thus, 2 ≠ 3 means that 2 does not equal 3. Keep these things in mind and you'll look this happy about working with inequalities. If you have 36% of your cell phone battery, you have 36 out of 100 units of battery life remaining.

Final Thoughts

"Percent" means "out of one hundred," and since the percent symbol (%) looks like the digits of 100 rearranged, it's easy to remember.