Working Through The Pasewark Word 2010 SAM Materials
Most people end up with this textbook because their college or training program requires it. The SAM 2010 Compatible Products version is specifically built to pair with Cengage's Skills Assessment Manager platform. It is not a regular retail textbook. The exercises are mapped directly to SAM assignments, and the skill labels, keyboard shortcuts, and even the screen layouts they reference come straight from Microsoft Word 2010. If you are taking a course that uses SAM, you need this edition. The standard version without SAM compatibility will still teach you Word, but the assignment references will not line up and that creates a real headache during graded work. The book covers the full range of Word 2010 skills from basic document creation through mail merge, tables, formatting, and troubleshooting. What makes it useful in practice is the way each chapter builds toward a specific set of SAM tasks. You open the chapter, read the targeted instructions, complete the hands-on exercises, then log into SAM and run the same procedures under timed conditions. The textbook walks you through the slow version first. The SAM platform tests you on speed and accuracy. Learning to transition between those two modes is the actual skill here. I spent several semesters helping students work through these materials, and the most common problem I saw was people treating the textbook as a reference manual instead of a step-by-step guide. They would skim the chapter, jump into SAM, and then get stuck because the textbook expects you to have already opened the correct sample files, set the right view mode, or enable specific ribbons before starting the task. For example, in the mail merge chapter, one student kept failing the assignment because Word 2010 defaults to a different mail merge workflow if you do not click the Mailings tab first. The textbook tells you to do that in the first step. Skipping ahead wastes time.
Another edge case worth mentioning involves the review and markup features. Word 2010 handles tracked changes and comments differently than later versions. If you are working through a chapter on reviewing documents and your version of Word has been patched or updated past the original 2010 release, some of the interface elements shift slightly. I had a student once who could not find the Show Markup dropdown because a cumulative update changed the ribbon layout for her system. The workaround was straightforward: she clicked the small arrow at the bottom right of the Review group to open the full Reviewing toolbar, which revealed the options that the simplified ribbon view had hidden. The textbook assumes you will see those controls. They are there, just sometimes harder to reach depending on your display settings. The book also covers how to handle formatting conflicts between styles and direct formatting, which is something many beginners miss entirely. You can apply a style to a paragraph and then manually bold a few words. When you go back and try to modify the style, Word ignores the manually changed text. This trips up students during the performance-based questions in SAM because the grader expects certain formatting changes to propagate through the entire document. The fix is learning to use the Styles pane properly and clearing direct formatting with Ctrl+Spacebar before reapplying the style. It is a small detail that causes big problems in graded assignments. If you are studying from this book on your own without a course, it still works well, but be aware that the SAM-compatible format assumes you have access to the online platform. Without SAM, you lose the graded practice component. The textbook exercises are useful on their own, but they are designed as preparation for the automated assessments. If you cannot access SAM through an institution, consider supplementing with free practice files or switching to a version of Word you can experiment with freely. The concepts transfer, but the grading mechanism will be missing.
The hardcover binding is actually relevant here because you will be flipping between the textbook and your screen frequently. The pages stay open reasonably well, and the paper quality handles highlighter use without bleeding through. It is not the lightest book to carry around, but for the price point of a required course text, the durability is acceptable. I have seen cheaper spiral-bound versions fall apart mid-semester from constant page-turning during lab sessions. One thing the Pasewarks do well is include troubleshooting sections at the end of many chapters. These are not afterthoughts. They address the exact errors students encounter during SAM, like missing fonts, broken cross-references, or corrupted styles. Reading those sections before starting the timed assignment saves a lot of frustration. I recommend going through the troubleshooting portion of each chapter before you attempt the corresponding SAM task, not after you have already failed it three times.
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