MyWritingLab Tips for Success
Sharon Rinkiewicz
Broward College, FL
After using MyWritingLab since 2007 with my individual classes at one campus and tutoring in the lab at
another campus where MyWritingLab was adopted campus-wide, the following will be helpful for any
teacher or school considering adoption.
Hold an orientation in a computer room. Repeatedly remind students to bring their access codes to
orientation. On the day of orientation, have one student work at the teacher’s station. Everyone else
just follows along with what is on screen. Therefore, everyone registers together at the same time. The
most difficult part about using MyWritingLab is the registration process. I usually hold my orientations
around the third week of class, so I can give ample time for students to purchase their books.
1. Print out a class set of your Course ID to prevent repeating it several times. When you set up
your course, Pearson will generate an email to you that provides helpful information and a
quick guide for students. What I do, though, is type up my own set of step-by-step
instructions, mapping out the registration process and the orientation activities. Registration
runs smoothly, and I just float around the room, providing individual attention as needed.
2. Remind students to write down their usernames and passwords and to choose something
they will remember. Students sometimes forget their username and password and will not
take the initiative to click on “forgot username and password.” Passwords must be at least 8
characters long, combination of letters and numbers.
3. Have students double and triple check to make sure they have typed in their email address
correctly. If you prefer that students use their school email, print out a copy of your roll.
Many students do not know their school email and will type it in wrong.
4. Have students work on a specific topic during orientation day. This gives students hands-on
practice with signing in, working on individual topics, learning their way around the
program.
Assign due dates
If MyWritingLab is left as “optional,” students will not do it. Your best bet to ensure timely completion of
everything and higher grades is if you assign due dates. Set the day and time in MyWritingLab, and this
will show up on the homepage calendar. Students will always know what is due and when it is due.
Since this feature was added, I have more students than ever before completing their MyWritingLab
assignments on time.
In all my years teaching, I have never had a student complain about MyWritingLab; they really like using
the program.
Set auto-prerequisites at the topic level. When you do this, it helps ensure that all students go through
the instructional material (overviews and animation) before completing the exercises. But this still gives
you the freedom to skip around.
Rearrange the material: No two instructors teach the material in exactly the same order. You can easily
rearrange topics and modules into the order that most closely matches the way you teach.
Set individual prerequisites and change settings. MyWritingLab moves progressively from simple
multiple choice questions, to apply, to write (if you choose to keep it, though I block it to minimize
grading). For example, you can set a prerequisite that students must get an 80% on recall before moving
on to the apply portion. Keep both recall 1 and recall 2. This ensures students get ample practice before
moving on to more challenging material. The apply portion closely resembles the types of mistakes
students really make, and it challenges students to become more detail oriented, so they can find and
correct the mistakes. By default, MyWritingLab provides two attempts, but I change the setting to four
attempts. One secret tip: when the beta version had first come out, there were four attempts. You can
actually safely change that setting in apply without students seeing the same paragraph twice!
Setting up your course: There is more material in MyWritingLab than anyone can ever cover in a single
semester. Take the time to go through the individual modules and block out topics you don’t plan on
covering. You can also block out other items that seem to overlap a great deal. For example, in Basic
Grammar you have two topics: verbs and verb tenses. I usually block “verbs” but keep tense. Likewise,
there is a topic on “adjectives and adverbs” and another on “modifiers.” Both cover the same thing, so
you can easily block one of them. In sentence skills, you have “sentence structure” and “combining
sentences.” While there is a little overlap, I strongly suggest going through each and determining which
one you like better. I personally like “sentence structure,” so I keep it and block the other. When it
comes to grammar, I often keep more than what I cover as a “just in case” deal. I learned early on that
some students freak out if they see ALL of what is really in MyWritingLab; otherwise, they may believe
you expect them to complete over a hundred topics! Although I still have a great deal in my course,
some of which I never cover, I stress to my students that they don’t have to complete everything; just do
what I assign. The rest is there “just in case you need the additional help.”
One example I’d like to share. A couple semesters ago, I was teaching the upper-level prep course. I had
one student whom advisement misplaced. According to his diagnostic writing, he belonged in the lowest
level ESL course. I couldn’t understand anything he wrote! I have never seen a student work so hard to
catch up with his peers. He worked on every single topic and all the extra practice, listened to the
animations two or three times each. Little by little, his writing improved. When you consider that he
could not write one sentence in English at the beginning of the term, it was a miraculous improvement
that he was writing full essays by the end and passed my class with a high C. And I have incredibly high
standards!
Customize it! I often add my own assignments in MyWritingLab, so my students get the more
challenging questions, and focus more on what I teach in class. For example, my students have to take
some very difficult lab tests. In the past, before this functionality was introduced, the majority of
students failed one test after another, despite having worked on hundreds of questions in the book and
my handouts, despite any online homework students did. So, I created a bunch of practice tests, in the
same format and same level of difficulty as the lab. Students still get instant feedback as with the
publisher created questions. Because of this, I have more students passing the lab tests than I used to.
Create your own writing assignments through Write Space: Nobody knows how to teach writing like
you do. No two instructors grade exactly the same way. Write your own topics, add your own rubrics,
adjust the settings, and even add material you want your students to review before writing. From the
student side, they have the look and feel of Microsoft Word. Their writing assignment also goes through
Turn it in. When you create your assignment, you designate where you want it to appear (e.g. argument,
research, etc). The assignment appears with the activities for that section. So you will have recall, apply,
and writing assignment. When you review, you can return to the student without a grade for major
revisions, you can give an initial grade and require a second draft.
Keep the ESL material “Grammar for Non-native Speakers”
ESL is a huge problem for us since we can’t send our ESL students to the ESL lab to get help with the
language issues. It is all the more important when you have developmental students in the 1101 class.
MyWritingLab now has 47 ESL topics at six different levels. You don’t have to assign any of this, but it is
there in case you want individual students to work on weak areas, such as modals or articles when you
see the problems creep up in their writing.
Other areas of interest for 1101 instructors I may not teach 1101, but I do enough paper readings for
1101 and 1102 students as a tutor to know one thing is true: students just don’t understand research
papers and they struggle with MLA. You can also use MySearchLab with your students, which points
students toward credible sources, provides help with MLA citation, and more.
Smarthinking: With constant budget cuts, it seems more and more colleges are operating on a shoestring budget. Some colleges, for example, had a contract for Smarthinking services, but they recently
eliminated it to cut costs. If you’re in that predicament and you like Smarthinking, you can have students
submit papers to Smarthinking directly through MyWritingLab.
Diagnostics and other decisions
As noted earlier, in addition to using this product as an individual instructor, I tutor on another campus
that has adopted MyWritingLab campus-wide. So if your institution is considering a campus-wide
adoption, the following may benefit you.
Path builder or skills check
There are two types of diagnostics in MyWritingLab: the path builder and the skills check. The first
question of course is “what’s the difference?” The path builder is a long diagnostic covering all the
material. You have a choice of a 55 question test or a 140 question test. You can go in and customize it
according to your preferences. Some complain about the length of 140 questions, but that also helps
ensure a more accurate diagnosis—5 questions per skill. The path builder, however, tests at a very
macro level. For example, students may test out of entire modules (e.g. everything under “basic
grammar”). It is not designed for the micro level. If you prefer more micro-level testing, then the skills
check is for you. Each module has its own short diagnostic test. Students won’t test out of the entire
module, but they may test out of an individual skill, such as parts of speech.
There are ways of adjusting the competency mapping; ask your rep or tech specialist for more
information on that.
If you choose to have students complete the diagnostic, this should be done either in class or in the lab,
supervised. Students will cheat on the diagnostic because they believe it counts as passing or failing.
They don’t understand what the intention is with a diagnostic. Other times, they try to “cheat the
system.” They look up answers in the book or online or have a friend give them the answers. Students
will end up testing out of a whole lot of material, not studying the appropriate topics. As a result, at the
end of the term when the mastery test comes along, they fail it.
Testing
MyWritingLab offers a posttest for each topic as well as a comprehensive mastery test at the end. At the
lab, students may complete the posttests at home, and they must receive mastery scores. However, we
set the prerequisite that students much receive an 80% in recall before the posttest opens up. If they
max out of available attempts without passing, we reset the appropriate topics every morning. The
mastery test, however, is password protected and must be taken in the testing center in LRC. In order to
be eligible to take the mastery test, students must have mastered all the topics.
Due dates for individual classes are staggered so as not to overwhelm lab staff at the end of the term.
There are two attempts at the mastery test, but only one attempt per day.
Target Dates: It is regular practice for us to set target dates. Here we may stipulate when the diagnostic
should be completed, when 10 skills should be completed, when 18 skills should be completed etc. The
mastery test date is non-negotiable. We stress to attempt the test once at least a week before the
deadline. If they pass, great; they’re done. If not, that’s okay too, because they still have a week to study
and try again.
Extra Practice: As the name implies, it is exactly that. There are tons of questions in the extra practice
section. We often direct students to the extra practice section in order to study for the mastery test or if
they are still having difficulty with the posttests. Here, we tell students they don’t have to do all the
questions; just do enough until they feel comfortable with the material.
Extra help features: You and your students will love the extra help features. In addition to the overview
(written notes about the topic. There is an audio feature you can turn on as well), there is often a
glossary to look up unfamiliar terms. But there is a button that says “help me answer this.” Point this out
to students, as it is an excellent resource. With this button, students receive brief instruction about the
particular objective being tested and an example. Once reading further, students are presented with
another question in a similar format as the one being worked on. They answer that question and then
return to the original. Another button that students will like is “email this problem to my instructor.”
With one click, the student has essentially emailed you a screenshot of the question being worked on.
You can then reply to student and explain the problem further, so she can understand.