STUDENT GETTING STARTED GUIDE

Transcription

1 Developmental Math MINDTAP MATH FOUNDATIONS STUDENT GETTING STARTED GUIDE Welcome to MindTap Math Foundations designed with help from students just like yourself. Once you ve logged in, the MindTap Math Foundations dashboard is your home base where you access everything in one place: Access your Current Assignment Get a calendar view of your course Track your progress with My Skills Access help, communication tools and additional resources Get short, quick practice activities CURRENT ASSIGNMENT Visit and see How to Do An Assignment for more information. To start, the Current Assignment area gives you access to all your assignments, tells you when you can begin working on them and when they re due. The available date shows when you can be working on the assignment and the due date shows when the assignment is due. If the assignment is currently available, it appears dark grey. The green ring around the assignment indicates how much of the assignment you have already completed.

2 Assignment Chain: Each assignment is made up of a group of activities called the Assignment Chain and has all the steps you need to complete your assignment. At any point, you can return to the dashboard, communicate, get help or see your grades. Assignment Chain Activities may include: Warm Up Games: The assignment always begins with a practice warm-up game designed to help you start learning the key math skills needed to complete that assignment. Check In: The next activity is a short diagnostic quiz to help you identify how much of the assignment s math skills you understand and which skills you may need to spend more time studying. Learning Loop: The next activity is what is called a Learning Loop. The Learning Loop focuses on a specific learning objective or math skill. You may have just one or multiple Learning Loops within each Assignment Chain. Each Learning Loop is set up by your instructor and contains: Videos Concept Builder Games Practice Exercises

3 Learning Loop - Video: First you watch the video lesson, which walks you through the problem solving process for that math skill. Concept Checks help make sure that you are understanding the problem solving process. Learning Loop - Concept Builder Game: The next step of the Learning Loop is playing a game designed to help strengthen your understanding of the lesson. Learning Loop - Practice Exercises: The final Learning Loop activity requires you to complete several math problems. These problems may require you to show your work, which you can do by writing directly on the Whiteboard using the drawing tools. See How to Use the Whiteboard at.com for more information. Use the Math Palette tool to enter common symbols when you input your response. And you can send your work to your instructor or fellow students to ask for help by taking a picture and sharing through the Message Center. Select the contact to which you want to send the message or picture, write your message in the dialog box, and hit the send button.

4 If at anytime you need additional help, you can: Access the Step-by-Step resources Easily access the walk-through videos View content in a more traditional text format Wrap Up Report: After completing the Learning Loop, the Assignment Wrap Up report shows you the number of problems you answered correctly, incorrectly, or did not answer. If you ve been successful, you ll be able to go on to the next assignment. 2 COURSE VIEW CALENDAR Tracking what is due and seeing what s coming up is easy through the Course View section. You will always have a one-week view of your Course from the Dashboard. Clicking the course view icon will bring up the daily details for that selected day and will appear on the right side of the screen. If you have a Quiz, Test, or Assignment due, they will appear in detail with a countdown timer to show you how much time you have left to prepare.

5 3 = MY SKILLS In the My Skills section, you ll get an at-glance-view of your progress, access to practice tests and resources to help your success on all the learning objectives. Visit cengage.com/ MTMFstudentsupport and see How to Use the My Skills Area for more information. From this dropdown menu, called the Skill Picker, you can select categories of Learning Objectives based on the skills contained in the entire course, the next quiz, the next test, or prerequisite skills for your course. Each dot represents your mastery level on a specific learning objective (the learning object is listed in the left hand corner). As you get answers correct, your mastery level will grow. All the dots will be purple when you have High Mastery of all the objectives. Grey - No Information, because you haven t answered a full set of exercises yet. Yellow - Low Mastery (score below 60%) Orange - Medium/Low Mastery (score of 60-69%) Bright Orange - Medium Mastery (score of 70-89%) Purple - High Mastery (score of %) Your goal is to have a for every Learning Objective! When you select an objective, you can then access content and activities to help you master it including: practice exercises, videos, games and text. You can select Practice Tests where you re given a set of exercises that cover the Learning Objectives for your next quiz or test. Practice Tests are scored and they affect your ranking on the My Skills page, but they do not affect your grade in the class.

6 4 RESOURCES AND TOOLS For more information on resources and communication tools, visit for video tutorials and how-to guides. Access help, communication tools and additional resources anytime you need to: Help provides access to support material and instructions for how to use. Grades: Get a summary of your grades from the student gradebook. Message Center includes class announcements, and in-app instant messaging. Resources like your syllabus, a glossary and other tools.

7 5 LEARNING BURST For information, visit and see How to Use the Learning Burst how-to guide. If you only have 15 minutes to study or do homework, activate the Learning Burst (located at the top of your Dashboard) and MindTap Math Foundations will automatically choose the content that you need to work on. You can choose to work on your current homework assignment (if you haven t finished) or practice skills through the activity you choose: watch videos, play games, read text snip-its or practice exercises. How well you do on the Practice Exercises can increase your mastery level in the My Skills section. Practice Exercises are the only activity in the Learning Burst that can affect your master level. Visit for more information on: Getting Started How to Do an Assignment How to Use Communication Tools How to Use the Whiteboard How to Use the Learning Burst How to Take a Quiz How to Quickly Access Your Resources How to Use the My Skills Area Technical Issues M A