<p>I’m taking dynamics this semester and we are required to sign up for the MasteringEngineering program from Pearson. Did any of you use it? Is it helpful? Do you think it helped you raise your grade?</p>
<p>Ok, I’m taking Statics this semester and it’s just the same problem from the textbook (maybe with small number changes). It’s just a software for teachers who are too lazy to grade manuel written homework. There are no hints and it doesn’t help you solve the problem. (at least my teacher didn’t have any of those options). However, it does give you multiple attempts to solve the problem (5) so if you get a problem wrong, you can try again or go get some help with the problem. You do lose % points for getting a try wrong but it’s better than a complete 0 if you get it right sometime.</p>
<p>I’ve used Mastering Physics which is pretty much the same thing. You may or may not get multiple tries, and multiple incorrect tries may or may not lower your grade. For my physics classes that used Mastering Physics we got 10 “free” tries, if you get a question wrong within the 10 try limit you won’t lose points. This depends on the class though.</p>
<p>As far as the program it is nice to know whether or not your answer is correct, but sometimes it is very annoying when your answer has to be typed in as variable form, and you miss something and all of a sudden its wrong. All the questions are just questions from the book but rewritten. You can probably find the solutions for these problems on Cramster or around the internet.</p>
<p>Web/application based homework is evil, pure evil. I remember doing web based physics problem and it was a nightmare. I don’t know how bad Mastering* is, but I have a feeling it could share some similarities with my physics homework. You could have the right answer but have one too many or too few significant figures and you were wrong, with no indication as to why it was wrong. Also, there would be tolerances (e.g. X +/- Y%) and if you were just outside of that range you were wrong, once again with no indication why. I remember once they tried to get clever with some problem that had to be answered symbolically and it was a disaster. I know there were more horror stories, but binary you’re right or you’re wrong homework grading is stupid.</p>