Spring 2009 WileyPLUS Customer Newsletter!Welcome to the Spring 2009 edition of the WileyPLUS Customer Newsletter! This newsletter is sent out 1-2 times a term to all customers we have on file. If you have colleagues who you think would be interested in this newsletter, please forward it to them and encourage them to sign up for future issues by visiting our website.
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Tools & Resources
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Short on time? Set your WileyPLUS course up in minutes using QuickStart! WileyPLUS courses with QuickStart contain pre-loaded assignments & presentations created by subject matter experts who are also experienced WileyPLUS users. By providing a foundation for your course, QuickStart will save you time and add value to your WileyPLUS experience. |
In a recent survey, 87% of instructors would recommend QuickStart to a friend or colleague! Start building your course with QuickStart today! Please visit www.wileyplus.com/quickstart for additional information, including an interactive Tour, a user guide, and a list of titles available with this resource. |
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Wiley is proud to introduce the WileyPLUS Student Partner Program. This program will connect your students to another student at your school who is an experienced WileyPLUS user - someone who has already mastered key concepts, knows the system inside and out, and has an established relationship with the WileyPLUS team. |
The WileyPLUS Student Partner can anticipate your students’ questions and problems, provide feedback, and encourage further peer-to-peer learning and engagement. Best of all, it will allow you to spend more time teaching! Do you have a candidate for a WileyPLUS Student Partner at your school? Contact your WileyPLUS Account Manager at www.wileyplus.com/accountmanager for more information on this exciting program! |
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Results from the Fall 2008 Student Survey
At the end of each semester a survey is distributed to all students who were enrolled in a WileyPLUS course. The results for the Fall 2008 term emphasize the value WileyPLUS provides to students, and highlights the types of activities students use WileyPLUS for.
More than two-thirds of students (68%) indicated that they thought WileyPLUS helped them get a better grade and 73% stated they had an excellent or good experience with WileyPLUS. Overwhelmingly, students would recommend that their instructors use WileyPLUS next semester, with 76% indicating this.
“WileyPLUS definitely had an impact on my grades. Anytime I did not understand a topic I would read the textbook over and do the online homework assignments which required me to do the required computations again and learn from it,” Yanexa Patricio, SUNY Albany
The chart below indicates the primary activities for which WileyPLUS is being used.
“The tools inside of the package were immense. Some of my online coursework from other publishers wasn't that broad. WileyPLUS definitely had additional resources. I could go back and study and the problems were straight to the point. It definitely helped me in Accounting,” Samuel Hampton, Valencia Community College.
Large majorities of students believe that the text-related resources helped them in some way. Resources were significantly more likely to be helpful in improving student understanding of the material, making students better prepared for tests and helping them retain the material.
Are You Interested in Participating in a Focus Group or Case Study?
The WileyPLUS team is committed to continuing to provide you with the best teaching and learning solutions possible. Ongoing dialogue with our customers is an important factor in helping us achieve this goal. If you are interested in participating in a series of interviews and focus groups, or think your course would make for a compelling case study, please contact your Account Manager for more information.
Updates from the WileyPLUS Account Management Team
Your WileyPLUS Account Manager is your “go-to” person throughout your WileyPLUS experience. You can depend on your Account Manager to provide information on training options, help set up your course, answer your questions, and more!
You have probably recently noticed some new features in your WileyPLUS course. In December, WileyPLUS Version 4.6 was released to all customers.
Improvements to the assignment creation, assigning and editing process:
- Suppress assignment sharing within your WileyPLUS course
- Preview questions without having to open them in a new window
- Assign fractional point values for individual questions
- Apply Point Potential options for question attempts
- Suppress correct/incorrect feedback on question attempts
- Improvements to question ordering feature
- Create printed tests and print from instructor view- with or without answers key
- Improvements to the process of assigning an assignment to multiple sections
- Ability to hide question names
- Ability to automatically deduct points for work submitted after due date
- Increased ability to edit assignments, especially when no gradebook data has been collected
Improvements to the gradebook:
- Ability to import grades in your WileyPLUS gradebook.
- Ability to scroll through submitted answers in the gradebook by student and question
- Select Math, Accounting, and Physics courses now have the ability to have your students “Show Work” while still having their answer automatically graded. The Show Work feature allows students to demonstrate the steps they took in order to solve a problem, or highlight topics they need more help on.
- Select Math & Accounting courses are also able to sort resources & questions and track student progress by study objective. Students will be able to view results on a given assignment by study objective, and the system will direct them to readings, examples, and practice problems to help them better understand the concepts they had trouble with in their assignment.
If you have questions about any of these features, please contact your WileyPLUS Account Manager to discuss a one-on-one or Wiley Faculty Network virtual walkthrough!
New from Tech Support
We understand how important it is to provide our customers with accurate content. Our WileyPLUS courses are extensively reviewed multiple times by Subject Matter Experts prior to their release. However, despite our best efforts, a content error may still occur. If you believe that you have encountered one, please report it to us via the “Report Content Error” link that is located in the top navigation bar in your WileyPLUS course. This will redirect you to our support page, where you can submit the information we need in order to investigate. There are several benefits to submitting this information via our ticketing system, including:
- A faster response time
- Improved tracking on the status of the correct
- Better communication once the correction has been published in WileyPLUS.
Once again, our goal is to provide you with accurate content. However, in cases where an error is found, we will make every effort to respond and correct it as quickly as possible.
Please Complete our System Requirements Survey
We would appreciate you taking a few moments to complete our system requirements survey Your answers will provide us with a better understanding of the hardware and software versions we need to support. Please also share this URL with your students and ask them to complete the survey!
Faculty Spotlight
Mary Lu Albee is a Professor Emeritus of Biology at Lewis and Clark College and uses Principles of Anatomy and Physiology by Tortora and Derrickson, along with the Laboratory Manual for Anatomy and Physiology by Allen and Harper.
What are your course titles, class section sizes?
I use WileyPLUS in my 2-term Anatomy and Physiology course. Generally, I teach one section of each half of the course each term, each of which are web-blended. There is a limit of 20 students per section. My students purchase the textbook and lab manual together with "codes" to access WileyPLUS.
What initially interested you in WileyPLUS?
I was looking for study aids, as well as a convenient way for web-blended students to submit lab reports. I had tried having them mail their reports to me, fax them to me, and had set up lab report assignments as surveys or quizzes in WebCT, but none of those mechanisms worked well for various reasons. WileyPLUS for Allen & Harper’s lab manual allows me to select and assign all or some of the parts of the lab reports found in the printed lab manual online. I create all of the assignments before the semester begins, carefully selecting the questions I like, and allow students to access them throughout the semester. Each assignment has a due date that corresponds with our on campus lab sessions and the corresponding textbook chapters. Some of the questions are self-grading, while others need to be hand-graded. Some students print out the assigned questions to work on and then transfer their answers back to the online assignment or answer the questions directly online. Students can print out graded lab reports to use for review.
The WileyPLUS course for Tortora has a variety of study aids, links, worksheets, practice quizzes & flash cards, just to mention a few of the support materials students have access to. Many print out photos of slides viewed in lab to create review materials for preparation for lab practical exams. Previously students cut up their lab manuals to make similar review flash cards.
Which WileyPLUS assignment settings do you use?
For most of the lab report questions, I allow 3 attempts since the students do not meet in person on a weekly basis and therefore miss the opportunity to work collaboratively or check answers against those of other students prior to grading in class. As a way of managing an issue with web-blended students submitting assignments by the due dates, I have taken advantage of the setting that incorporates an automatic deduction for late submissions. If I later determine that a student had a legitimate reason for a late submission, I can override the automatic grading and eliminate the deduction.
Do you use WileyPLUS in class or for making extra resources (besides HW) available to your students?
No, I do not use WileyPLUS in class since we meet only a few times during the semester - for lab work involving multiple lab exercises and for the comprehensive final exam. I do set up suggested activities and assignments (not graded) for the online textbook and encourage the students to take advantage of them.
How has WileyPLUS impacted your students' learning?
Students who take advantage of the study aids in WileyPLUS indicate that it is helpful to them in organizing their study time and clarifying concepts. The students find submitting the lab reports using WileyPLUS to be efficient and appreciate the convenience and also the fact that I can comment on their answers and explain things they missed.
I cannot link student performance to their use of WileyPLUS as far as the ungraded study aids for the textbook go, but I believe that it can improve student performance for those who take advantage of it.
How has WileyPLUS impacted your teaching? Are there things you do differently now?
It has improved the way I present/offer online instruction in my courses. It compensates to some degree for the lack of face-to-face contact that occurs when a traditional class is converted to a web-blended one. I have not used WileyPLUS to teach on campus in a traditional classroom because we discovered it about the same time that I retired and shifted to teaching only web-blended sections as an adjunct instructor, but I cannot imagine teaching a web-blended A & P course without using WileyPLUS or a similar product at this point!
Introducing the clickOn Personal Response System!
You may be familiar with Personal Response Systems, or clickers as they are commonly known. Research indicates that by using a Personal Response System, professors are able to engage students and increase participation, especially in larger classes. With that, Wiley is very excited to launch clickOn, our new response system technology. Like other response systems, clickOn allows students to answer multiple-choice questions on the fly. Unlike other systems, clickOn utilizes students’ mobile phones at no cost to them or you! clickOn doesn’t require any hardware or software, therefore there are no replacement costs or laborious training requirements. It’s a simple, intuitive polling system intended for student engagement. If you are interested in learning more about clickOn contact your Wiley Representative at www.wiley.com/college/rep. |
Social Networking and WileyPLUS
Social networking is building momentum in higher education. Virtual networking with your peers and colleagues is a remarkable way to learn about new developments in the field, share success stories, and learn best practices. Join our WileyPLUS group on Linkedin to see what professors just like you are doing in their course, also we have a twitter feed to keep you updated on the latest news.
