Integrating MyWritingLab into Your Course

The information in this section comes from our past and present Faculty Advisors. Learn more about these people on our Faculty Advisor Program page.

Teaching Tips

• Jan Anderson
  Central Texas College
• Chuck Gonzalez
  Central Florida Community College
• Terri Maddox
  Jackson State Community College
• Bev Neiderman
  Kent State University

• Sharon Rinkiewicz
  Broward Community College-Central
• Anna Schmidt
  North Harris Montgomery Community College
• Ona Seaney
  Southern Methodist University

Jan Anderson, Central Texas College

• Direct students to print items that they don't understand and bring them to class. Use those items as teaching points for the class.
• Encourage students to work heavily in the lab at the front of the course so that application of knowledge can take root earlier in the course.
• Address assessment requirements by using the Diagnostic Test and Post-Test as a pre- and post-test measure of the course.
• Peruse MWL before teaching, so you can adopt the same language in your instruction and avoid confusion for students.
• Don't hesitate to contact your Pearson rep if you run into problems. If they don't have the answer, they will provide you with a contact who does.

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Chuck Gonzalez, Central Florida Community College

• Hold a regular supervised lab where students complete MyWritingLab assignments in your presence. Should a student show mastery of a topic by completing it online off campus with outside help, you can require additional sets be done in your presence where you can assist in the student actually mastering the topic. The mastery percentage should conform to the school's minimum percentage to pass the course. Students should also complete some writing in your presence within MyWritingLab . They should be required to type and maintain electronic documents for their graded writing assignments.
• Encourage students to work heavily in the lab at the front of the course so that application of knowledge can take root earlier in the course.
• Students should have to complete MyWritingLab activities as a reasonable percentage of the grade for the course.
• Deadlines for completion of MyWritingLab activities should be set to keep students on track and prevent last minute cramming.
• Create an assignment handout or document with all the MyWritingLab assignments that students can refer to daily.
• Align your daily semester class activities with MyWritingLab topics so students get the needed reinforcement and practice.

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Teri Maddox, Jackson State Community College

• In preparing for my classes, I usually select particular topics from three sections that I want students to work through: Grammar for Writers, Writing a Paragraph, and Writing an Essay.
• The first week of class my students write a diagnostic essay and we go over the syllabus. By the second week, students have had time to buy their textbook and their access code. I spend class time for students to register because that has been one of the hardest parts of using the software. I assign some of the Writing chapters for students to begin working in such as The Writing Process, Prewriting, The Topic Sentence, Developing and Organizing a Paragraph.
• By the third week, most students have gotten used to the software and we take the Pre-Test. Students now have their Study Plan in place so that they know what they have to do the rest of the semester. They must complete all of the Grammar for Writers sections that I have pre-selected. I give students time in class to work on MyWritingLab, but most do not have enough time to complete all their Study Plan in class. The most successful students are the ones who work on MyWritingLab outside of class.
• I like using the Student View so that I can understand what kinds of questions are asked, especially on the Apply questions. Although the Apply questions are more difficult than the Recall questions and take some getting used to, I like students to experience them since those questions more closely reflect real reading and writing than the Recall questions do.
• We work as a class on some of the textbook chapters, but MyWritingLab is always individualized. Students like to be able to work at their own pace—more quickly if they can, or more slowly if they need to.
• Students who are experiencing difficulty with a chapter are either sent to a tutor for individualized instruction, or we go over that particular topic as a class. For example, some students have difficulty with the Misplaced Modifiers, Combining Sentences, Varying Sentence Structure, or Parallelism topics. I usually put those topics way down on the list so that they are not working on them until they have done more recognizable topics like Subjects and Verbs, Run-ons, or Fragments. I usually go over all these chapters in class because students are not familiar with them

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Bev Neiderman, Kent State University

• Present the class with clear guidelines for their work to get the desired teacher results (completed work, an understanding of the material, practice using the material, etc.) and student writing improvement (students won't open the program and question what they are supposed to do.)
• Set a minimum level of competency as a standard for student work
• Allow students to work at their own pace within set grading guidelines
• Be prepared for technological glitches
• Incorporate the online work with your classroom assignments for maximum benefits

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Sharon Rinkiewicz, Broward Community College-Central

• Arrange a day to walk your students through using the program. Continually remind students when and where the walk-through will take place, and remind them to bring their access codes several times. Otherwise, students will forget their codes, and they will not be able to participate in the activities. Schedule the walk-through around the third or fourth week of class.
• Some students buy their books used, in which case the access code will not come with their books. Advise these students that they will have to order the access code through the website ASAP. Other students, despite your reminders, will still forget or lose their access codes. If your campus bookstore does not sell these codes separately, you may want to get a few extra codes to keep on you "just in case" to avoid any little catastrophes that may occur.
• Have students come up with a user name and password beforehand. When students come in with this information already written down, the walk through process runs much more smoothly. Advise students to double and triple check to make sure their email address is typed in correctly. I've had students who not only forgot their passwords but also did not type in their email address correctly; as a result, it was nothing short of a nightmare trying to recover this information.
• Block out modules you don't plan on covering, and arrange the order of topics the way you teach it. It makes it easier for students to see exactly what you want them to do, and the condensed list of topics allows students to relax more.
• Have students work on a module on the day of the walk-through, so they can get the hands on practice using the program.
• Try as we might, there will always be some students who don't take computer work seriously because it isn't physically turned in on a sheet of paper. I register myself as a dummy student in one of my courses. Using the smart computer in the classroom, I will display the instructor view for the entire class to see. I will click on myself, and I'll show my students that from the instructor view, I can see the day, time, number of attempts, and a graph for any given module. They see this and begin to take the work more seriously.
• On the day a certain module is due, just before class, click on topic summary. Within five seconds, you will know if students had trouble with a given concept. You can then spend ten minutes reviewing the material, so students can understand. Then tell students to go back and try again, and move on with the activity for the day.
• Vary the activities. If you rely solely on MWL, students will become bored.

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Anna Schmidt, North Harris Montgomery Community College

• Make sure you learn the program before you start using it in the classroom. For example, I always have all my students sign up for the first time in class all together. I already know some potential problem areas and give my students very thorough instructions anticipating the problems.
• Some of the problems my students encounter when signing in are: incorrectly entered access code, user name already in use (I have to advise them to come up with an alternative which is easy to remember), students forget user name and password by the next meeting session. The last one gets even more complicated if a student entered incorrect e-mail address or forgot the e-mail address he/she entered. I always tell my students to WRITE DOWN their user name and password inside the access code card. Interestingly, access code cards are pretty difficult to lose.
• When I create a course, I go through every module and hide those topics that I am not planning to use during the semester. So that when my students log in, they will only see the modules we will be studying in class – it is a shorter list and helps them stay focused.
• I leave some of the modules for my students to see even though they are not on the syllabus. I tell my students that I left those on purpose – they are very important and those students who want to work on their writing and grammar skills independently, are welcome to work through those modules.
• Keep an open mind. No matter how wonderful a computer program is, it is only a computer program created by other people who sometimes make mistakes. Throughout the years of using the program, I have seen quite a few errors and malfunctioning situations. Therefore, I never use MWL for testing purposes. I primarily view it as a wonderful tool for additional practice for my students.

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Ona Seaney, Southern Methodist University

• Don't expect the technology to go smoothly all the time! Prepare for difficulties with login, computer incompatibility and other issues.
• Use visuals as often as possible. The MWL videos are very helpful. Today's students are more visually oriented than ever before.
• If you feel comfortable with it, try integrating MWL with Blackboard for an all-around package.
• Use the diagnostic pre-tests and post-tests! They're a great way for the students to have an "objective" view of their progress (or lack thereof).
• If you are teaching in a computer classroom, MWL is a great way for students to workshop on their papers with guiding and your help.

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