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Title: The Little, Brown Handbook (10th Edition) (MyCompLab Series)
ISBN: 0321389514
Author:
H. Ramsey Fowler
Jane E. Aaron
Publicate Date: 2006-02-18
Publish: 2006-02-18
List Price: $74.67
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $35.00
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $24.97
Amazon Merchant Price: $54.26
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A happy customer
I received the book in a timely manner and happy with the condition. Definitely will order from this seller again.
Trong
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2: MyCompLab: Little Brown handbook's free software
Pearson's premature rollout of MyCompLab has been disastrous for my writing students and for me.
The product's design is to be praised. However, the current product's functionality and most of all its technical support service are sufficiently flawed to cause students to drop the course or to perform poorly, below their actual writing ability and motivation level.
Pearson's registration process and its printed directions are complex, requiring needless information from students in order to register in the instructor's correct online course. In some cases, students were still waiting for help from Pearson tech support two weeks into the semester -- just to get registered at the site. Further, the registration process is complicated enough so that students who make an error are unable to back out to repair the error; they remain locked in a dead zone, registered at MCL but not in the instructor's course. I have not received confirmation that Pearson is revising this procedure in its December 2008 upgrade.
I have had to call Pearson's tech support repeatedly, often several times a week. In almost every case, the technician is unable to answer my question and must "send it up to a specialist." The technicians are always professional, but they do not have the answers I need to be able to continue with instruction in my course. Support for students is as bad or worse, they report.
This past weekened, Pearson decided to do an upgrade -- in the middle of the academic semester. For my purposes, the key strength of MCL is its support of the instructor's revewing process of student writing. I am able to embed comments directly in student work and return that work for student revision. During the upgrade, Pearson changed the functionality of MCL's buttons, in effect hiding my comments from students. Of course the upgrade was done when there was no tech support available to anyone -- in spite of their 24/7 logo, so the course again ground to a halt. It turned out that in some cases the comments survived (if they could be found), and in other cases students needed to resubmit their papers, and I needed to recorrect them in order to trigger the "new and improved" model. Hours and hours of work were wasted.
Because Pearson has decided to develop MCL unattached to its course-management sytem, CourseCompass, the course-management tools in MCL are extraordinarily weak. One example: If students do exercises to remediate errors in writing, the instructor must open every single exercise to find the student's score. Amazingly, Pearson has developed a roster that is not organized around the student name but rather the Pearson exercise. The function becomes useless to the instructor.
Font size, wasted screen space, unnecessary scrolling and clicks: all contribute to an inelegant screen and a clumsy experience.
I have worked with Pearson's CourseConmpass for years. I was involved in the Beta for MCL. I have taught blended and online courses for years using various platforms. I can adapt and can find end runs around dead ends. But this product, while good in concept -- is flawed. It was sent to market too soon, and tech support was never brought fully into the loop. If you adopt this product now, be prepared for great frustration. Be prepared too for emails and phone calls from your students. The complaint are endless.
To Pearson's credit, they have provided me with the email addresses and phone numbers of some key MCL players. They are mostly good listeners and are certainly well intentioned. They tell me they are working day and night to improve their product. I tell that that my students and I are working day and night to be able to use their product. My students should be working hard at learning course material, not at figuring out dinged-up web sites. Not so good.
Wait a year. Then try what might have become a wonderful product. There is great potential here.
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3: Little, Brown Handbook
Good seller. The book was in mint condition. This seller honors their ad. If you are looking for a seller of excellent books, look no further because here it is. I recommend this seller.
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4: Good Little Book
owned a previous addition but needed an updated edition for class. great lil brown book
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5: be more descriptive
i thought I was getting the actual handbook not the workbook, but the ad didn't say workbook so I was mislead
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