What's New in MyWritingLab?

As is the case with any good technology, MyWritingLab is improving every day. The Pearson Media Team is committed to providing high quality features and content to help instructors teach and students learn. The changes listed below are the result of the feedback we've received from our users—instructors and students alike. Thank you for being part of our team!

Your feedback is valuable to us! Please feel free to email your comments and suggestions to EnglishLabs@pearson.com.

New Enhancements for Summer 2008

New audio lessons. Twenty new audio lessons for select writing topics.
New critical thinking topic. Critical Thinking has been added as a topic with supporting recall, apply and write exercises.
Streamlined and easier registration. Steps have been eliminated from the registration pages, the required steps have been updated to be easier-to-use for students, the text has been evaluated for readability and help documents and videos have been added to assist students.
Control over mastery settings. Instructors now have a control in their Settings that allows them to choose whether mastery is based on highest score or most recent score. The Gradebook will default to whichever setting is chosen.
Selective release of content. Instructors have a new control that allows them to selectively release Test content to a student after the student completes a certain number of practice sets.
Easier process for resetting alerts. The application now includes a more direct way to reset exercises when the instructor receives an alert.
Content preview from Study Plan. Instructors now have the ability to preview content via the Study Plan without needing to complete the exercises in the Student View.
Information provided on the number of exercise sets. The Instructor View of the Study Plan now displays the number of exercise sets available for each topic.
Password protected diagnostics. Instructors now have controls that allow them to assign a unique password to each diagnostic. This will allow instructors to control when students can take their diagnostics.
Notification if students moving between courses. When a student moves between two courses for the same product (or from standalone into a course), the instructor will be notified via a pop up
Integrated help. Help documentation for key features is now available to students and instructors on specific pages of the application.
Comprehensive content review. We’ve launched a comprehensive content review/edit in an ongoing effort to make sure our content is error-free and effective.

New Enhancements for Winter 2007/2008

User Guides and Help. Instructors and students will find comprehensive User Guides and Registration Guides available at www.mywritinglab.com/help.html. Additionally, the Help link within MyWritingLab has been populated with easy-to-navigate and effective content to help users find answers to their questions when they need them. The Help link can be found in the top right of the screen when logged into MyWritingLab.
Alert and mastery icons. The icons and text associated with alerts and mastery have been revised to be more clear and encouraging to the student.
Ability to reset exercises. Instructors now have the ability to reset exercises from the Alerts page. Additionally, the “Clear” button has been changed to “Archive” to be more consistent with the actual functionality.
Improved navigation. The “Return” button at the bottom of the class roster page now directs the user to the page they last came from instead of always returning them to the settings page.
History of all exercises in student gradebook. Students can now view and print a history of all their exercises.
More details included in gradebook export. Course name, course section and instructor's name are now included in the gradebook export.
Access to Pearson's 24/7 Technical Support (http://247pearsoned.custhelp.com) from every screen.
More usable interface for Pearson's 24/7 Technical Support (http://247pearsoned.custhelp.com ).
Redesigned Grammar Apply activities. MyWritingLab's Grammar Apply activities improve critical thinking skills and reinforce concepts learned from the Recall exercises. Students not only identify errors but correct them—and all within the context of a complete paragraph. Furthermore, while students edit, they can track their progress on their screens and receive automatic feedback for each error. These activities have been completely reengineered with a contemporary interface that is faster, more interactive and easier for students to use.

New Enhancements for Summer 2007

Redesigned Grammar Apply activities. MyWritingLab's Grammar Apply activities improve critical thinking skills and reinforce concepts learned from the Recall exercises. Students not only identify errors but correct them—and all within the context of a complete paragraph. Furthermore, while students edit, they can track their progress on their screens and receive automatic feedback for each error. These activities have been completely reengineered with a contemporary interface that is faster, more interactive and easier for students to use.
Write Exercises in Grammar Topics. Each grammar topic has a new “Write” exercise, in which students have to re-write incorrect prose. To use these new writing prompts, go to “Set/Edit Properties” for each Grammar topic > Click the checkbox next to the new question > click save at the bottom of the page.
Increased usability through improved display of content:

The display of readings and review materials is more narrow and consistent with common usability standards specifically developed for low literacy users.
The font size of readings and review materials can be adjusted up or down. This feature is particularly valuable for the visually impaired.
A Print view for all readings and review materials has been added so users can see an entire piece of text in one view.

“Student View” for instructors. "Student View" and "Teacher View" links have been added to the header of every page allowing instructors to see what their students see.
Easier-to-use instructor Study Plan page. The initial page for the instructor Study Plan has a more accessible interface and better explains all options available to the instructor.
Easier-to-use course builder. The course builder "Choose a Course" page now allows instructors to view all book specific courses or all generic courses.
More flexible diagnostics. Instructors now have the option to choose the topics they want included in the diagnostics and the pre-tests they want to require.
Improved navigation within diagnostics. A "Next" button has been added to the end of each required diagnostic. Using this button returns students to the "Diagnostics Required" Page, where they can select another required diagnostic.
Exercise resetting. Instructors receive an alert when a student exhausts all of the exercises for a particular topic without achieving mastery. The instructor now has the ability to reset the exercises so the student can take them again and continue to work on mastering the topic. Resetting an exercise clears any associated alerts.
Most recent, highest and average scores in gradebook. Users can now choose to view scores on their most recently attempted set, their highest scoring set, or an average of all attempted sets.
New export option in gradebook. Instructors can now export their gradebook reports in CSV format.
Increased number of Write exercise drafts. The number of Write Exercise drafts a user can submit has been increased from 2 to 10.
New question types. A new Flash API allows for a greater variety of activities and exercises. Additionally, new short answer, write, fill-in-the-blank, and multiple choice questions types have been added.
Make a suggestion. A "Make a Suggestion" link has been added to the footer of the instructor interface. The link leads to a form that instructors can use to make comments or suggestions directly to the English Media Team.
Back button. The browser Back button has been enabled throughout the application so users will not lose their place in the application and can use it to navigate to the previous page.

Your feedback is valuable to us! Please feel free to email your comments and suggestions to EnglishLabs@pearson.com.