I think they are good but for my class they are bad. The multiple examples and exercises are great practice. I used to take an introductory programming course when I was still in electrical engineering but that was structured terribly for first-time programmers. I enjoyed writing code to solve the problems given. The examples helped me do the challenges and labs a lot. Great formatting, love the interactive exercises. I didn't actually have a problem with zyBooks itself, but I didn't like that we were doing the class in C because I don't really have a use it for in my degree (applied math). It was confusing at first when I needed to buy my textbooks at the beginning of the year since the ISBN wasn't recognized, but this tool is pretty helpful and engaging. i wish i could look back at old books and do some exercises to freshen up on things, without buying it again, like a real book, Some parts of zybooks were confusing and frustrating at times, but I worked around it, Helped me better understand data structure. It takes advantage of the fact that it is an online material and uses that advantage to help students learn. Install the script, preferably using ViolentMonkey. I love the real-time feedback on labs and challenge activities, as it allows me to catch my mistakes early on and fix them before they cause me any real trouble. but would be value add more separate reading offline access then lab online access. Being able to code then and get instant feedback was very helpful! I thought Zybooks was going to be like _____, but I actually liked it better than _____, I found it easier to use and navigate. My biggest question is why the program switched from Udacity to zyBooks? Being able to make mistakes was useful too as it helped to build an understanding of how to address things that didn't work as expected. It was extremely useful to learn from Zybooks. This is an amazing application. Really good challenge questions and practice problems. Less text doesnt mean less learning. The animations are very helpful, and I like that everything relates to something in real life so I truly know that learning this will be useful in my every day life. It was so easy to navigate through the app. All Systems Operational Uptime over the past 90 days. zyBooks strike the perfect balance between text volume and engaged learning, with studies showing that students spend more time learning. Broke really daunting subjects down into easier-to-understand problems. The repetition from typing in answers helps reinforce Java syntax. Love the challenge problems and lots of examples. It costs too much money and should be available always. Pretty good, liked how it really showed the steps and you had to work through it. I thought zybooks is a wonderful way to learn python. Zybooks is a great learning tool that teaches the concepts of topics very well. A person like me who passes interviews for companies every day, this was not interesting. The chapters would show how to read a string or add one item to a dictionary but would never show how to read over multiple. Overall experience is great! Although I am not a fan of computer science I believe that this was a great tool to use in practice to get better at computer science. I just got done reading their "how to guide" and it provided a lot of thorough steps. Very easy to use and the problems provided in the textbook help me practice and understand the material better! the website and platform is organized very well, it is easy to read and functions well. I have found it very helpful in my courses. I appreciated the exercises, drills, etc. Our goal is to continually improve so we can help more students succeed, and more instructors have a better teaching experience too. "They say a picture is worth a thousand words. It's much better than other online textbooks. Teach me and I remember. Sometimes I rent zyBooks for classes that don't even assign it. Sometimes the reading was difficult to understand, but other than that I enjoyed zybooks. Most of the time I learn easier using zyBooks than my professor. The way they are now is really dense and difficult to understand. Zybooks is one of the best way of self-learning. I would say it is a great tool to expand beyond the scope of most courses, but not that helpful in directly assisting in the actual course. I like how it is formed and lets me do the things I need to in order to learn. Zybooks was much better than a typical text book as I felt I learned the material better with the interactive format. There is some room for improvement like some progress bars or score calculation bar. If I don't understand something and get answers wrong it lets me see the answer and helps me see why the answer is the answer. I wish the tasks were more creative and more challenging. It has great exercises throughout that help quiz on the material, so it isn't all just reading. It is harder moving back in forth because when you come over to zybooks -it acts like it don't want to bring up the information that you need to do your work. This will be shown if an incident or maintenance is posted on your status page. In this course it feels extremely disconnected from the subjects we are learning and putting into practice in homeworks. I like the exercises are interactive and worked into the material. It could sometimes be annoying but regardless it has been the best assisted learning tool I've used in my college career. I enjoy how simple, organized, and straight forward it is. Super easy and quick to use. I've always found it to be very instructional and informative but, I do believe that the things taught in here need to be accompanied with a professor explaining how it works. But it is ok stressfu. Terms of Use Privacy DMCA Notification Policy 2021 zyBooks, Katherine Murphy, Student, Clemson University, Dale Reed, University of Chicago, Illinois, Laiba Mustafa, Student, University of Guelph, inspired by a Chinese philosopher, 818 AD. It was my first time using zyBooks but it was easy to learn how to use and I like the structure of the problems assigned. By that I mean that you are doing activities while you read as opposed to reading the chapter first, then doing exercises. I have mostly worked out the code, except for a persistent whitespace issue. It really helped me learn more about Python. I think it's a helpful, interactive textbook for learning matlab. We keep the price as low as possible to sustain our efforts. It was of great help when there was something I did not understand about a certain topic. increased by zyBooks is helpful and informative and largely possesses more pros than cons when it comes to learning this material. I really loved the user friendliness that Zybooks provides for first time users. Very in-depth and thorough explanations. That can be confusing. I find zybook to be a great way to study the material for the class, and I enjoy its organization and inclusion of practice problems. The participation and challenges are very nice. Love how it works, it allows me to enter code and test it out here. Some may skip the advanced part, some will find it useful. Good source of material, but programming assignments are sometimes too easy. The exercises seem good and it takes pressure off knowing there is no penalty. Students: Using a zyBook in your class? So here I am. The integrated interpreter and the ways it is used with the material enhances the learning experience in a very powerful way. The videos were helpful since it helped to visually watch the material make sense. I found it more useful to take notes straight from zyBooks rather than attempting to listen and summarize what my professor stated. Very interesting to see an interactive part as the centerpiece of instruction, Usually turned to zybooks for clarifications from my other lectures. Pretty Neutral really.. David Walter, Virginia State University, It really breaks down complicated concepts into simple exercises that give you a chance to digest concepts outside of confusing programs. We hear this from community colleges, 4-year teaching or research universities, top-10 schools, and more. Really good interface, although the processing of some assignments is very slow. zyBooks is very helpful and convenient. I thought it was helpful. It is very helpful and compliments a lecture well. It is much more engaging than reading a 1,300 page textbook. Zybooks is a very good learning resource. Good material, good examples, good practice. The utility is superb. Only good for learning when its a supplement to actual lecture on the material. I believe that zyBooks is very essential to learning within a remote setting. The activities really helped with the understanding of the topics. But many things in life aren't. I think I learned a lottt! Very pleased with this form of textbook, which I've never encountered before. It has been tremendously helpful in teaching me java. I like that it is online and you can work out lots of different problems, but I have had an issue with some answers on those problems and had to contact support about them. Argentina. You guys are doing great! and taking so many classes at a time that is critical. I will strongly recommend this learning site to other people. Well done. The interactivity and the sample questions makes the learning process much more engaging and efficient. Thank you. I really like everything about it. Fun to use because assignments are baked into the reading. Link: Student survey Basics A loop commonly must iterate a specic number of times, such as 10 times. I thought it was a very good way to help me learn C++. zyBooks is a great learning program that helps the user learn the material that is needed, the hands-on challenge really enhance the learning experience. I also appreciate how zyBooks are a participation grade and that I can focus on learning rather than on getting a good grade. I learn well through it. The questions are very challenging. Material is good as it walk throughs the topics. I did find that there were some syntax errors and I did report them. Fill in short answers for you. Allowed me to be better prepared for lecture and tests. direct entry speech pathology programs near illinois. I like it so far. I think ZyBook is great for a course in Computer Science, but I doubt it would work as well for other STEM courses. But there's a solution to the problem: zyBooks. I am enjoying the material except zyBooks is terrible. ZyBooks is integrated with Canvas. I like it a lot! I found zyBooks reasonably good at learning complex concepts. Organized, repetitive, instills learning. Having a relatively inexpensive (relative to other textbooks) text that is online was pretty nice and the interactive examples and problems made content easier to understand. Many instructors wonder if their students will like zyBooks. I enjoy the interactive activities in the chapters. I like the feature where they let us to see answer, because sometimes I really have no idea what to right, and I don't need to struggle for too long. Zybooks has been very helpful in learning the material with many clear examples. It is the best online textbook system I have seen so far in college. Though it was useful the challenges were very hard to read through and complete. It was a nice website to use to turn in the assignments and it was easy to find chapters and was really easy to participate in class with the assignments. It's a well organized and useful tool in studying, as long as the teacher follows the guidelines and doesn't rely on it for the sole method for the students to learn. It is a great software for students to utilize while taking college courses. It's a nice, interactive tool to facilitate material. For what you charge, it upsets me that I have nothing left after the course for reference material. I liked zyBooks but the labs were a lot harder than the assignments. I love the concept, particularly fitting for computer science. I spent more time chasing down formatting errors in lab and challenge activities than I did actually learning. The exercises were involved and helpful, and the material was very comprehensive. Summed up: Zybooks is very bad for interaction and understanding, but the actual content and definitions are fine. That's great for the teacher, and that's how software is really tested in real life, however, students from SNHU (at least the ones I tutored) are going through the course without ever running a single line of code on their computers, and interacting with their programs, they just keep writing the code on the zylabs interface, and keep sending the code until the testing suite says the code is correct. I learn more by discussions or other physical interactions. I think all professors with flip classrooms should use zybooks. I also plan on recommend zyBooks to any one wishing to learn coding or other lessons that are available. Great information. not much, so far, pleasant experience. Philip Papadopoulos, UC San Diego. A good site to practice the material thats assigned, zyBooks was really good for learning C++ because of the interactive examples and animations. Easy to learn with visuals but not so much with a lot of text. I think zybooks is pretty good. I think the financial team should rethink it's margins and what they profit. We don't really have a recitation where we use this code so Zybooks was a pretty good substitute for it. Usually, I find them un-engaging and hard to follow, but I was extremely pleased with zyBooks, especially all of the in-chapter activities that make sure to keep users' focus. I thought it was very engaging for the student. Interface is really intuitive. Concise and engaging courseware helps students learn and retain more. The zybooks allow the student an interactive way to complete homework assignments and learn the material. I loved the interactive exercises in the textbook, it made it really easy to learn the material. It has a clean interface, that is easy to navigate, and the way it steps through concepts is tremendously helpful when going back to hear them in Lecture as well as reviewing material for a program or before an exam. It was interactive and kept me engaged. I think the reading material combined with the interactive participation is an outstanding setup for learning. I really enjoyed the interactive platform and challenge activities made sure I really understood material. This was a good way to ingest information outside of the classroom. Zybooks was easy to navigate through and showed me a list of when my assignments were due. Their use, compared to traditional reading, requires less time and is less monotonous, as well as often being easier to understand. learn.zybooks.com - zyBooks content and platform ? I love how ZyBooks performs the guided training, then the labs. It was a great experience and I wish that all of my courses implemented it. vegan options at biltmore estate. The participation activities make sure that you fully understod the concept. Great learning platform with it's interactive learning environment. I think the one issue I have with it is just that occasionally the challenge sets feel much more complicated than is to be expected. I am disappointed that this wasn't the case. However a reminder either through email would have been helpful. Everything is explained and defined in detail even when you miss the question on the assignments. I know code very well and have to take this course for requirements. The zyBooks e-textbook is one of the best e-textbooks I have ever used, with progress checks that are actually substantive. Before I end this post, I'd like to say that maybe it isn't Zybooks fault. Showed material in great depth with a step-by-step guide to walk you through difficult material. Some of the participation questions are tedious but the examples are super helpful.The overall structure of the course is also very well organized. just a better ui for the transitions with fsm simulators, would be nice. Sometimes the lessons are a bit long and confusing, so by the time you get to the challenge questions there is just too much information, but overall its a good system. The zybook really helped me to better understand all of the topics in this class. With zybooks I was able to get the practice and explanations that I really needed and I started doing a lot better on my exams and quizzes. I find the slow pace of the animations (even at 2x speed) to be annoying sometimes, especially when there are a dozen or more so unskippable steps. Very insightful and well structured program. I like zybooks, I enjoy the interactive aspect of it, and the fact that it helps me understand concepts and it is something I can easily go back to. Ready to see zyBooks in action? On the positive end, the material is easy to learn due to diagrams and other illustrations. zybooks lays out the material in a flow that makes it easier to understand and view. As someone from the Latino culture and heritage, I found it particularly dissapointing when I read the default mad libs inputs to read something about eating burritos makes you muey macho or something along those lines. I think zyBooks is a very easy program to use and is very convenient since all of it is online. It seems good to work at a certain pace, definitely helps when you have to go back on a specific part of an assignment youre doing, it's a lively demonstration of books, it's great. I got so upset about not being able to access an exam, that my PTSD kicked in and I don't remember even taking the test. Zybooks has helped me immensely to conceptualize matrices and linear algebra. I liked the interactive aspect of it, though the way the information was sometimes structured was a bit confusing. During studying computer architecture, I always crave to know the exact flow of the computer(with animation or sth). It was very fun and easy to use for learning the more complete parts of C++ but I still had a lot of fun. not reliable at times. offered interactive learning that was a great help, I wish there was more instruction on the challenge problems to implement more learning. zyBooks are available in topics ranging from introductory programming courses in various languages to mobile app development. Goes way beyond traditional textbooks and is much more effective. It would be helpful if the print function worked. It seems like Udacity would be a better option for this program. I think it is a great way to learn coding concepts in particular! So since the week before spring break when all classes when to the online format, the zyBooks assignments and exercises were INCREDIBLY helpful. Terms of Use Privacy DMCA Notification Policy 2021 zyBooks. For a computer programming course, this works wonders! I loved using ZyBooks. It was good for learning because i wasn't just reading, or just activities at the end. One problem I have would be the video portions seem to be a bit time consuming. And that's worrying, because there's a lot of really good free resources avaliable on the internet. No, it's not outright racism, but it is a micro aggression that just made me upset. I hope future online classes use zyBooks. In one case - I had completed a program as specified by our teacher, and when I put it through the tests it failed 0/9. Comedy is great, I love comedy and there's so many great ways to include comedy in education and that's just not one of them. Zybooks is definitely on the mark when it comes to helping students understand the materials. I wish it could have audio explaining things sometimes, as I am an auditory learner. It was good, I like how there was no penalization for getting the wrong answer creating better learning environment. The book needs more explanation of how to do things, when I was completing activities and needed guidance, there wasn't much and I ended up spending a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on. It's a very useful website with good technology that helps learning with answering questions. I felt the challenge questions allowed me to prove that I knew what I was doing. An easy and effective method to learn the material! I would suggest prompting the survey later in the learning as it will provide more value-added responses from learners versus premature opinions, such as mine. I am enjoying the activities and challenges that are throughout the chapters. I found it easy to use and a great help. zybooks is bad Honestly, zyBooks was the best digital textbook subscription I have had thus far in my college education. Interactive assignments within the text, easy to understand instructions. Zybooks is a great intereactive textbook however it is easy to not learn much since most of the time the answers are either given or multiple choice. and had specific due dates for chapters (still not bad!) From my experience of using zyBooks, I feel that it is a great tool for learning java. Last year, it was a lot harder for me to learn, because we did not use ZyBooks. zyBooks made it very easy to continue learning during the COVID-19 outbreak because the majority of our class was already based on zybooks. It was such good practice. However, I found zyBooks to be an exception to my vendetta against online books. This does not feel to me to be a design error but mostly a technological limitation. It is easily accessible and can be done anytime, anywhere. Our interactive animated content is expensive to create and continually maintain. Anyone else experience this with zybooks? good paced. Very effective learning material. The approach zyBooks took me through to learn the same material was leagues ahead of my learning experience last year. zyBooks uses thousands of questions integrated into the content to help concepts sink in. Super easy to use and has very cool visual/video/interactive examples. Change your testing methods. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Initially, when we switched to remote learning, I thought that having a mandatory textbook requirement would be a nuisance; however zyBooks is actually a really good resource. They do not have clear instructions or teach what to do clearly. Out of all the different online learning sources I've had to use over the past two years, Zybooks has always proven to be the most reliable and insightful option. It was great since it had a bunch of examples and showed you different situations with every topic. I like it. Very nice design, very easy to navigate and operate, A good way to learn the information by having many participation and challenge activities. The system is very glitchy. Really cool program. It's helpful and interactive. Becoming the bad guy. Can't find anything, search feature is terrible, no summaries, doesnt save the selections for questions. I'm just starting CS program slackiswhack 2 yr. ago For Python: PyCharm For Java: Eclipse Good luck. I think its a better alternative to online classes since it explains things relatively concisely however, i prefer actual classes. So far, I like it because it's very straight forward. It worked beautifully. I think zybook is better than physical books. The active activities do aide in learning the material. Very easy to use and learn. The user interface was very simple and easy to interact with. Scroll to the bottom of this page for further discussion of recent survey results. Zylabs is basically a testing suite: It has a set of inputs, and expected outputs for each input, it runs the code sent by the student, and checks if the output of that program matches the expected outputs. Only show 1000 responses, even though we had several thousand more. I think it is a great learning tool that makes textbook reading more interactive and manageable. I thought zyBooks was a nice website and had good directions but it just wasn't for me. Pretty good learning platform, has been pretty useful. Pretty easy to use, although the sensitivity to white spaces was rather unnecessary. Once my professor decided to use zybooks I had something that worked for me. Overall I found zybooks to be helpful these past two semesters as the way the lessons were provided, helped give a low risk environment while still being able to teach. I have access to zybooks anywhere as long as i have a decent connection to wifi. but instead of giving us assignments on them, he would just check that we had done these in-book assignment things that we could just click through, so I never gave a shit about the readings. Often times could replace a whole class. I learn better through zyBook's example problems, especially when I miss them the first time. Also, if there were more in-depth details on certain topics, it would be greatly appreciated. However, the Zylabs are too specific with their criteria that it's more of a bother to do them in here, so we usually use other online IDEs to do them. I really enjoy the interactive zybook. zyBooks, as a learning tool, is VERY helpful for people who beginning to learn how to code. Operational 90 days ago 100.0 % uptime . I have no formal experience though and could be wrong. A important part of this proccess is the interaction of the student with the programs that he creates: Is by interaction that the student's mind can solidify the concepts that he learn, and is by interaction that he can learn how to fix errors. The lessons were also super engaging because there were interactive parts dispersed throughout each reading. I enjoyed zyBooks because it is interactive. In other words, even for students who said No to marketing, the comments were overwhelmingly positive. I really enjoyed using the interactive textbook. It worked well and it explained concepts well enough. I'm currently using _____ for another class and hate it. I just started my Software Dev degree at WGU in July. However, there have been a couple of instances where zybooks has mad it difficult for me to learn a specific topic, mostly because the lesson along with the challenges and participation activities introduce coding topics that have not been covered yet.