Best Practices for Implementing
Pearson Writer
Contents
Before You Begin........................................................................................................ 3
What Is Pearson Writer? ........................................................................................... 4
Why Read this Guide? .............................................................................................. 4
Where Do You Find Help? ......................................................................................... 4
Who Will Help Me? ................................................................................................... 5
Best Practice 1: Identify the problems you want to solve. ............................................... 6
Are your students weak in grammar, mechanics, and sentence structure? ...................... 6
Do your students struggle with the writing process? .................................................... 6
Are your students weak in finding appropriate resources and citing them correctly? ......... 8
Do your students have time management and project organization issues? .................... 9
Do you want to involve more group work or peer review in your course? ...................... 10
Best Practice 2: Work with both the app and website to best fit your goals ...................... 11
Will you use Pearson Writer in class as an instructional aid?........................................ 11
Do your students come to office hours? .................................................................... 11
Do your students submit papers online? ................................................................... 11
Are your students aware of how and where they use their resources? .......................... 11
Best Practice 3: Inform instruction through analytics .................................................... 12
Best Practice 4: Build an assessment plan ................................................................... 14
Best Practice 5: Explain why you are using Pearson Writer ............................................ 15
Best Practice 6: Start small ....................................................................................... 16
Best Practice 7: Position students for success .............................................................. 17
Before You Begin
Hello and welcome! We’re glad you’ve adopted Pearson Writer (Writer), the next generation
tool to help students improve their writing. This guide helps you implement Writer in ways
that are most effective for your students, and also assists you in measuring the tool’s
effectiveness within your course.
Here’s what you will get from this guide:
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Just-in-time assistance for downloading Writer and using the website

Insightful best practices and strategies for effective implementation of Pearson
Writer
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Helpful step-by-step videos of the procedures you need to follow

Case studies showing successful implementation of Pearson Writer
As you work through the best practices in this guide, you will notice the following icons:
Indicates a video showing the steps for completing the
activity.
Indicates a case study supporting the best practice or
suggestion. More will be added over time, so check back
often.
Indicates a suggested strategy or assignment to try with
your students.
What Is Pearson Writer?
Pearson Writer is an app, built for students from the ground-up, that enables students to
review their writing and grammar rules, find and cite appropriate resources for their
research, access rhetorical and handbook content, and organize their writing projects. It is
also an instructional tool to use in your class. You and your students can access Writer
through both the Writer website and the mobile apps. For an overview of the tool, watch
this video.
Why Read this Guide?
This guide will get you on the path to efficacy, encouraging you to use Pearson Writer by
engaging with our ten best practices. We have a huge body of evidence that supports these
ten best practices. We know that when you follow these best practices for using technology
in your classroom, you will have measureable results. As you know, Pearson Writer is new;
therefore, we have only a few case studies, which we will continuously add to as we have
more users and evidence of results. If you are interested in doing a case study with us,
please email [email protected].
After reading this guide, you will be able to download, login, use, and implement Pearson
Writer. If you have questions or need more information, please use the resources above or
contact your Pearson rep.
Where Do You Find Help?
Learning to use Writer is a snap. As you require students to use the tool over time, you’ll
find new ways to implement it. There are a few tools to help you.
1. This Best Practices Guide. Access this Guide often, as it’s updated monthly.
2. The www.pearsonenglishexchange.com community. For advice, best practices, and
ongoing support, connect anytime with English professors and members of the
Pearson Faculty Advisory Network, a network of educators teaching with Pearson’s
technology.
3. The www.pearsonwriter.com website to find support links and update info.
4. The Expert on Demand live training sessions. These one-on-one sessions last 30
minutes. You can register for a time slot at least 24 hours in advance. At the
designated time of your session, you will connect via Webex with an expert faculty
member who uses Pearson Writer. Talk to her and ask her anything you want about
Pearson Writer.
5. The embedded help links within Writer and its website.
6. The Support Home Page website. Here, you and your students can access phone
support, 24/7 chat and email support, and an extensive, searchable knowledge base
with how-to articles. These resources are also accessible from mobile devices. You
can also find out if Writer has been down due to systems issues at our Knowledge
Base.
7. The YouTube video series. Review these quick 2-3 minute videos on how to do
something within Pearson Writer. Here are direct links to videos on YouTube. Share
these with your students, or share the Playlist link.
Video Name
Citing a source Pearson Writer (website)
Citing a source Pearson Writer (app)
Creating a project Pearson Writer (website)
Creating a project Pearson Writer (app)
Finding sources Pearson Writer (website)
Finding sources Pearson Writer (app)
Using Notebook in Pearson Writer (website)
Using Notebook in Pearson Writer (app)
Using Writers Guide Pearson Writer (website)
Using Writers Guide Pearson Writer (app)
Using Writing Review Pearson Writer
(website)
Using Writing Review Pearson Writer (app)
Video URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
hSEvH98gVwc
http://youtu.be/DqCtNnCNr1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
xOHqGCTdClM
http://youtu.be/a8HjuSLDnH4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
9elPwt6srww
http://youtu.be/E50UiNeWWWI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
BddK5xY0otc
http://youtu.be/53OdxrJUQIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
xbP75SacHFQ
http://youtu.be/nSVTRffcWhI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
E_uZ87v7-iQ
This feature is pending for the
app.
Who Will Help Me?
At Pearson, the center of our world is the learner. In order to support all of the learners we
influence, we have a team of dedicated professionals who will help you achieve your goals
and are responsible for your success. In the United States, with a similar model used
elsewhere in the world, the team consists of the following people who you can find through
your rep:
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Your Rep: Your rep is your first line of contact. She will assist you with your book
and software selections, setting up instructor logins and passwords, working with
you and your bookstore on your order, assuring that implementation is going well,
and getting you what you need when you need it.
Your Learning Technology Specialist: This person works with the rep to ensure
that the technology solution you use fits your needs and that you are trained on its
use.
Customer Digital Support (Not at all accounts): This specialist ensures the
technology solution works as specified and modifies the solution to specific customer
needs.
District Manager: The rep reports to the District Manager, who ensures the team is
working smoothly and assists where necessary.
Learning Solutions Consultant: Working with your rep, this person develops
custom solutions that are unique to your campus, including MyLabsPlus.
Product Support: This team assists when something in the solution is not working,
error codes are occurring, or logins and passwords aren’t working. You can reach
them three ways, but first, you’ll always want to check the Knowledge Database to
see if your question has already been answered.
Best Practice 1: Identify the problems
you want to solve.
Chances are that you adopted Pearson Writer because you want to help your students write
better. But what is “better?” Have you isolated areas of concern in your students’ writing or
what would quantify as better outcomes?
Pearson Writer has 5 main areas:
Writer’s Guide provides instructional and definitional content for writing, grammar, and
research, including discipline-specific content and access to Purdue Owl.
Writing Review checks papers for possible spelling, grammar, and style errors, while
offering grammar help and suggestions for revising and editing.
Cite a Source keeps track of every source throughout a student’s research and builds the
bibliography in the background, taking care of formatting details.
Find a Source finds relevant, reputable academic sources for research papers.
My Projects is a task manager that helps students stay on top of multiple projects and
makes sure deadlines don't sneak up on them.
How can you apply these sections of Writer to help your students become more successful
writers?
Are your students weak in grammar, mechanics, and sentence structure?
If so, have the students complete a writing assignment. Require that they run their
assignment through Writing Review and have them print out their Writing Review summary.
Then, have them go to the Writer’s Guide to search terms and concepts that appear in their
Writing Review summary. After they’ve reviewed the relevant topics, have them rewrite
their sample and turn in all drafts, summaries, and evidence they used Writer’s Guide.
Do your students struggle with the writing process?
If so, have your students search the Writer's Guide for prewriting, drafting, and processing
content. They can use "student-centric" searches like, "I'm stuck," or rhetorical keywords,
such as "prewriting, drafts, revision," and receive instructional content and examples to help
them move forward. See below for results Writer returned from a search on “Prewriting.”
See below for results Writer returned from “I’m stuck.” Notice that students can click the
star to denote it as a favorite, then return to their favorites later rather than having to
search.
Are your students weak in finding appropriate resources and citing them
correctly?
If so, have the students use Writer to find their resources. Within the tool, they can search
and find peer-reviewed journal articles, websites, books and other references (see the chart
below). In Find a Source, they can access the full-text of peer-reviewed articles on their
mobile device or computer.
Once the students find their references, Writer will analyze the quality of their references,
the number of sources, and their database usage. In addition, it will format the citation in
the style you require. Students can then export their full bibliography to add to their paper.
See the screen capture below.
Assign the use of the Cite a Source and Find a Source tools, have the students run the
analysis, and have them self-reflect about the results. Could they find better resources from
more reputable places? Are they relying too much on websites and not enough on journals?
You could require that they have all “excellents” in their analysis. In addition, you could
encourage them to play around with the citation styles. In your class, they may have to use
MLA, but in their Psychology class, they might have to use APA. What does changing the
citation style do to the entry, and why is that important?
Do your students have time management and project organization issues?
Pearson Writer can help your student organize their notes, manage their project timelines,
and build outlines. Students can add milestones, such as “First draft due,” and opt to
receive emails when a deadline is coming up. In addition, Writer provides editable checklists
for each task in their project to help the students keep track of their work. See below for a
status and checklist screen capture.
Help your students learn time management skills by requiring them to use the My Projects
tool. Assign a writing assignment where they modify the existing checklist to allow them to
add relevant steps to keep them on track. During draft one of their papers, have them take
a screen shot of their Writing Progress. Either meet with them to discuss their time
management or have them self-reflect. Require that they use the notebook to keep their
sources organized, and have them take a screen shot of their notebook so you can see how
many notes and references they are tracking. Have them turn the screen shots in with their
different drafts to see how they progress over time.
Do you want to involve more group work or peer review in your course?
If you want to do more group work, a good way to use Writer is to first group students so
that you have three to four in a group, spread out by skill; high, medium, low. Assign a
writing prompt with a required citation to the group, then have them work on their rough
drafts in class or the lab. Have each student use Writing Review on her version of her
response, and then use the group to evaluate the Writing Review feedbacks constructively.
Finally, have the group review Cite Sources feedbacks as well.
Best Practice 2: Work with both the app and
website to best fit your goals
Pearson Writer is accessible via the website and the app. Fortunately, with one purchase,
students have access to both, but one might be better than another for you and your
student population. All features are available in both versions, with the exception of the
Writing Review and some note taking in My Projects.
Will you use Pearson Writer in class as an instructional aid?
If so, you’ll probably want to pull up the website version. Here, you can demonstrate the
effectiveness of Writing Review on a student’s paper. You could also pull up some of the
Core Concepts or the Purdue Owl content to provide content for your instruction.
Do your students come to office hours?
If you regularly have students come to your office hours, have Writer ready on your phone
or tablet. As you review a student’s paper and your comments, search for the content of
your feedback within the Writer’s Guide to show students how they could use the
instructional content to improve their paper. Use Writer as you would use a handbook—but
do it on the student’s terms. Or, if your students have submitted papers electronically, run
the paper through Writing Review. Point out that if the student had used Writing Review on
her own, her grade might improve.
Do your students submit papers online?
If you have students submit papers online, have them attach a PDF of their Writing Review
summary or a screen grab of the Core Concept they uncovered in the Writer’s Guide. Or, if
your students have a research paper, require that they use the app to scan the bar code of
a reference and to take notes on their references for their bibliography.
Are your students aware of how and where they use their resources?
If you wonder how or where your students use Pearson Writer as a resource, develop a
survey for them. Their answers will inform you for your next semester. Ask them how many
have a smart phone, where they used Pearson Writer, and when they used the website.
Best Practice 3: Inform instruction through
analytics
If you have an institutional agreement with us, you may have the ability to run analytics of
how and when students use Pearson Writer. This information can inform your class on the
spot, providing you the opportunity to change your instruction to meet your course
objectives.
You can see how often students have logged in and whether they are using the tool.
You can see which activity area the students use the most. This will be helpful to you as you
learn how the students use the tool in relation to your assignments.
You can see the top ten topics the students opened and how many opened that topic.
Imagine if you saw that “Comma Splices” or “How to take notes” was a top ten topic? Would
you change your instruction in your next class period or assign a different homework
assignment? Or, what if your class is a high-performing composition class, yet your students
keep searching for subject-verb agreement? Would that inform your objectives for next
semester?
You can see how the students are managing their projects via the project report. If your
research paper is due next week, but no students have started any projects, could there be
an issue with time management?
Best Practice 4: Build an assessment plan
We get the following question many times: How do I assess in a product that doesn’t track
student input? Good question. If you have an institutional agreement with us (see Best
Practice 3), you can use analytics to track student usage. You can also require students to
share what they are doing inside of Writer with you throughout the course.
This best practice gets at the issue of “required” versus “optional.” We have hundreds of
case studies of Pearson’s technology that absolutely and affirmatively show that students
don’t do optional—especially the students who need “optional” the most. But don’t take
Pearson’s word for it; take the word of The National Center for Academic Transformation
(www.thencat.org). They also have reams of data that support “required” over “optional.”
Therefore, how can you require Pearson Writer? There are a variety of ways.
1. Put an item in your syllabus. State that it’s required, just like using Blackboard,
attending class, or handing in assignments. Give explicit instructions on how to
get Pearson Writer and when students will use it. Here’s some suggested text:
“We will use Pearson Writer in this class. You can use either the website
version or the app version—both are available with your access. Purchase
access at www.pearsonwriter.com. While there, look at the tutorials and read
the FAQ under the Student Support section. This is a required component of
the course and will be used in our writing assignments.”
2. Require students take screen captures of their Writer usage. Identify places for
them to use it in their assignments and require the screen grabs when they
submit their assignments. State that the assignments will be incomplete without
evidence of Writer usage. Write into your assignment the instructions for the
screen grab requirement.
3. Show how to use Pearson Writer in class. Although it’s a fairly easy product to
use, demonstrating and modeling behavior in class will drive usage outside of
class. See the Ashford case study for evidence.
4. When discussing something in class, for example, “analysis,” have your students
work in groups with Writer. Have them research a topic in Writer and report their
findings back to the class. Do the same task as a journaling item if you are in an
online or hybrid course.
Best Practice 5: Explain why you are using Pearson
Writer
Successful implementation of anything new requires everyone, including students,
instructors, and administrators, to agree on why the technology is being used. We know this
is not an easy task—getting two people in a department to agree on something is hard, but
getting everyone to agree can be almost impossible-- but keeping the conversation focused
on achieving outcomes can help.
We’ll focus on the students in Best Practice 6, but first, let’s take a look at the instructors
and administrators. We go by the mantra, “Well-trained users are happy users.” We suggest
the following strategies to help get other faculty and administrators interested in and
excited about Pearson Writer.
1. Share this guide with them.
2. Invite them to a training.
3. Meet with your Outcomes and Assessment folks and discuss why Pearson Writer will
help improve retention.
4. Show the Ashford case study (and others, which are pending).
5. Have the students answer a survey (use ours!) and share at the end of the
semester.
6. Demo Writing Review or Writer’s Guide to them on the spot.
7. Ask your tutors in the writing center to review.
8. Have faculty read the Instructor FAQ at the Support page.
9. Share the YouTube playlists.
Best Practice 6: Start small
Pearson Writer is not complicated, yet its five main features could become overwhelming if
presented to your students all at once. Rather than overwhelm them, be laser-focused in
one or two features and very prescriptive to your students about when and why they should
use each feature.
1. For example, if you have a grammar-heavy course, require they use the Writer’s
Guide to look up terms they don’t understand. Pearson Writer allows “real-world”
language. They may not understand terms like “insubordinate clause,” but if they
search in Writer for “bad sentence,” they’ll get the guidance they need.
2. Or, perhaps you have a writing-intensive course, which requires good note-taking,
and you may not have as much time as you want in class to cover this skill. Have
students set up a project, and you can let Writer do some of the heavy lifting for you
on note-taking instruction.
3. Have students conduct research on a specific topic in Writer as homework. Tie that
research to an in-class activity or assignment.
4. Walk students through Cite a Source and require that they use it to develop their
Works Cited page.
5. Direct students to study a specific Core Concept in Writer’s Guide (such as “What is
Plagiarism?) and print out the results or do a screen grab of the results from the
Quick Check Quiz.
Best Practice 7: Position students for success
Students aren’t as computer literate as we would like to think they are. They may be able to
download music and post status updates, but their ability to critically use technology
matures over time. Don’t assume that because Pearson Writer is an app designed for
students from the ground up that they’ll know exactly what to do.
Instead, we suggest you do the following to help students be ready.
1. Include information in your syllabus about where to buy and how to download
Pearson Writer. Include a link to
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/writer/support/index.html
2. Demonstrate on your first day of class how to access the website and how to
download the app.
3. Clarify which mobile devices the app will work on and what the tech requirements
are for the website.
4. Show the student support page, which is also where you can find all of the
information pertaining to 1, 2, and 3 above.
5. Ask your Pearson rep to come to your first day of class, be in your bookstore during
rush, or have open office hours where students and faculty alike can drop in to ask
any questions.
6. Model Writer in-class often.
Thank you for reading and using this guide. If you have comments about Pearson Writer,
please direct them to [email protected]. If you have comments about this guide, direct
them to [email protected]. In addition, if you have best practices you’d like to share or
add to this guide, direct them to [email protected].