Think-Pair-Share Exercises

With this active learning feature (in the book and online in SaplingPlus), students work on exercises in pairs or groups in class. Each chapter includes one or two Think-Pair-Share exercises about the chapter-opening story, and more at the end of the chapter. These exercises sometimes ask students to think about genetics in social, ethical, and applied contexts, and may involve connecting material from other chapters.

SaplingPlus for Genetics Essentials, 4e

The new Fourth Edition of Genetics Essentials is now natively supported in SaplingPlus, with an online solution that combines an e-book of the text, Pierce's powerful multimedia resources, and the robust genetics problem library of Sapling Learning. It's an extraordinary new learning resource.

Highlights of SaplingPlus

The help students need, when they need it

With SaplingPlus, students practice and solidify foundational knowledge in basic coverage questions before applying those concepts to complex and engaging problem-solving style questions. Students will practice skills ranging from abstract thinking to article comprehension to data analysis and more.　

Interactives to engage students

These tools can be used in lecture, in small group or lab settings, as well as in graded homework assignments. SaplingPlus for Pierce includes interactives on Evolutionary Trees, Punnett Squares, Karyotypes, Transcription Regulation in Prokaryotes and more.

Problem Solving Videos to develop essential skills

These videos cover tough topics like epistasis, dihybrid crosses, gene mapping, and pedigree analysis.

End-of-Chapter Questions in Sapling's acclaimed format

Ben Pierce has long been praised for the quality of his end-of-chapter exercises. Many of those exercises from the new edition of Genetics Essentials have been converted into automatically gradable problems in SaplingPlus. Each question features a Hint, a completely worked solution, and feedback directed to the error the student made.