Features and Benefits
Innovative pedagogy helps students bridge gaps and develop a conceptual framework
Also available with Mastering Biology
Mastering™ is the teaching and learning platform that empowers you to reach every student. By combining trusted author content with digital tools developed to engage students and emulate the office-hour experience, Mastering personalizes learning and improves results for each student. Mastering Biology extends learning and provides students with a platform to practice, learn, and apply knowledge outside of the classroom. Learn more about Mastering Biology.
Teach your course your way: Your course is unique. So whether you’d like to build your own auto-graded assignments, foster student engagement during class, or give students anytime, anywhere access, Mastering gives you the flexibility to easily create your course to fit your needs.
- NEW - Early Alerts in Mastering Biology help instructors know when students may be struggling in the course. This insight enables instructors to provide personalized communication and support at the moment students need it so they can stay–and succeed–in the course.
- NEW - Five Ready-to-Go Teaching Modules expand the number of modules designed to make use of teaching tools before, during, and after class, including new ideas for in-class activities. The modules incorporate the best that the text, Mastering Biology, and Learning Catalytics have to offer and can be accessed through the Instructor Resources area of Mastering Biology.
- With Learning Catalytics, you’ll hear from every student when it matters most. You pose a variety of questions that help students recall ideas, apply concepts, and develop critical-thinking skills. Your students respond using their own smartphones, tablets, or laptops. You can monitor responses with real-time analytics and find out what your students do – and don’t – understand. Then, you can adjust your teaching accordingly, and even facilitate peer-to-peer learning, helping students stay motivated and engaged. Instructors can create their own questions, draw from community content, or access the Learning Catalytics library of question clusters. Focused on key topics, the clusters consist of 2-5 questions about a single data set or scenario.
Empower each learner: Each student learns at a different pace. Personalized learning, including adaptive tools and wrong-answer feedback, pinpoints the precise areas where each student needs practice and gives all students the support they need – when and where they need it – to be successful.
- NEW - Pearson eText is a simple-to-use, mobile-optimized, personalized reading experience available within Mastering. It allows students to easily highlight, take notes, and review key vocabulary all in one place–even when offline. Seamlessly integrated videos and other rich media engage students and give them access to the help they need, when they need it. Pearson eText for Campbell Biology presents 500 carefully chosen and edited videos and animations that bring biology to life. Resources include End-of-Chapter Quizzes, Get Ready for This Chapter questions, New Figure Walkthroughs, and HHMI Biointeractive videos and animations.
- NEW - Figure Walkthroughs guide students through key figures with narrated explanations, figure markups, and questions that reinforce important points. Questions embedded in each Figure Walkthrough encourage students to be active participants in their learning.
- Dynamic Study Modules areassignable modules that pose a series of question sets about a course topic. The questions adapt to each student’s performance and offer personalized, targeted feedback to help them master key concepts. As a result, students build the confidence they need to deepen their understanding, participate meaningfully, and perform better – in and out of class. Students can use their computer or the MyLab and Mastering app to access Dynamic Study Modules. Available for select titles.
- Adaptive Follow-Ups (AFUs) provide targeted practice and coaching to help students master the material. Relying on findings from cognitive psychology studies, Adaptive Follow-Ups incorporate spacing – the practice of repeatedly presenting information over spaced intervals – to help students retain information. Each assignment is broken into sets of questions that target gaps in understanding based on the student's past performance on course work to date, including homework, tests, and quizzes.
- Visualizing Figure Tutorials guide students in practicing visual skills and include coaching feedback.
- Visualizing the Data coaching activities encourage students to practice their data interpretation skills.
Deliver trusted content: We partner with highly respected authors to develop interactive content and course-specific resources that keep students on track and engaged.
- Galapagos Evolution Video Activities, filmed on the Galapagos Islands by Peter and Rosemary Grant, bring to life the dynamic evolutionary processes that impact Darwin’s finches on Daphne Major Island. Six videos explore important concepts and data from the Grants’ field research, with assignable activities.
- NEW - LabBench pre-lab materials provide the perfect combination of technique, content, and skill development to help your students move toward inquiry and understanding. These take students step-by-step through the concepts and techniques necessary to understand and conduct biological investigations, and ask them to make predictions, justify conclusions, evaluate data, apply mathematical techniques, and analyze the results of their investigation. Each section ends with formative assessment questions that test student comprehension and implement answer-specific feedback for each question.
- LabBench topics are: Cellular Respiration, Biotechnology–Bacterial Transformation, Biotechnology–Restriction Enzyme Analysis of DNA, Energy Dynamics, Cell Division–Mitosis and Meiosis, Transpiration Fruit Fly Behavior, Enzymes, Diffusion and Osmosis, Photosynthesis, Artificial Selection, Hardy-Weinberg Modeling, Blast and Phylogeny
- Evaluating Science in the Media coaching activities guide students through a step-by-step process for evaluating the authority, motivation, and reliability of online sources of scientific information. Topics include genetically modified organisms, head injuries, tanning and skin cancer, and more.
- Scientific Thinking Activities help students develop an understanding of how scientific research is conducted. Topics include research questions such as “Can Scientists Use Gene Expression Data to Personalize Cancer Treatment?” and “Do the Microorganisms in Our Digestive Tract Play a Role in Obesity?”
- HHMI Short Films are documentary-quality movies from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that explore topics from the discovery of the double helix to evolution, with assignable questions.
- BioFlix® 3-D Animations help students visualize biology with movie-quality animations that can be presented in class, reviewed by students on their own in the Study Area or eText, and assigned in Mastering Biology. BioFlix Tutorials use the animations as a jumping-off point for Mastering Biology coaching exercises on tough topics.