In this course it feels extremely disconnected from the subjects we are learning and putting into practice in homeworks. I find much more engaging than a tradition textbook. So since the week before spring break when all classes when to the online format, the zyBooks assignments and exercises were INCREDIBLY helpful. The activities help me to truly learn and understand the material instead of just reading lots of theorems that take forever to understand. It's written way better than my standard textbook. zyBooks, as a learning tool, is VERY helpful for people who beginning to learn how to code. I like the user interface design and the interactive challenges and assignments. I enjoy the interactive activities in the chapters. I think it is a really good resource for learning programming concepts. second it also helps the instructor on seeing how students in this class do. zyBooks is a comprehensive online learning platform. I think they are good but for my class they are bad. I like the fact that it is a virtual text book that has questions to answer as you go. Zybooks is definitely on the mark when it comes to helping students understand the materials. I dont learn as well just reading text though, I wish there were video explanations and examples. It is very helpful, I used it for two semester. Here is the link to it. Zybooks modules enhanced my learning and understanding. I really liked how topics were laid out and the speed at which they were covered. zyBooks was defiantly a useful resource for me during this semester. However, I truly wish the book wouldn't disappear after the semester. Philip Papadopoulos, UC San Diego. zyBooks use animations to dynamically illustrate complex concepts. Very pleased with this form of textbook, which I've never encountered before. The reading activities are really helpful. The animations are extremely slow and the questions are pretty tedious but I did learn a lot. Many students dont pay for textbooks: In a survey we conducted in classes using a regular textbook, 30% admitted to illegally downloading pdf, and another 20% to not acquiring the book at all. Its much more cheaper than Cengage and I totally agree with it. I think its a good aspect to have in the classroom. I do not have much of an opinion on this. Annoying but I can understand why we have it. This is my first computer science I've ever taken, and I haven't had good experiences with past online textbooks so this was a pleasant surprise. 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. Zybooks has given me great insight on both classes I have used it for. Now that classes are taking place virtually, zyBooks has become even more important in my learning experience. zyBooks was helpful in reviewing or getting ahead in the class. specially with our current situation at the moment! zyBooks is a very good platform for educational purposes. I liked examples of code and found them very useful. But it is ok stressfu. Its gotten a lot better. The challenge for any instructor teaching a first course in programming is helping students "get" programming. Some topics become tedious. We have users at all such schools, and student responses are overwhelmingly positive across all. Not a bad platform or way of learning the material but for the actual coding examples it would be nice to be able to get the answers if you are really stuck. It allowed me to keep on track with my work through practice problems and participation throughout the entire course. 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 love zybooks. Zybook is clear and easy to understand. Has been a very helpful learning tool this semester, really helps break things down. I absolutely love it! Far more helpful than the lecture, and was likely the main reason I'm doing as well in the class as I am. Only show 1000 responses, even though we had several thousand more. 16% 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. It has numerous spelling and grammar errors as well as confusing material. But students want more, and we get it. The textbook has had some issues. I enjoy zyBooks more than other textbooks as the assignments are engaging and the labs are relevant and decently challenging. Clearly, some of those 50% of students are going to be upset they cant access our content free or just ignore it (due to points). I really like how the zybook has the participation activities. I feel like the content is thought out and interactive. it was very expensive as something that is meant to aid in the process of learning. Many of my friends just clicked through the program randomly until they got a correct answer then moved along. It was a good estimate of what I knew or didn't know. After all, completion of these assignments is for credit and on a timeline.). It was extremely helpful in providing structure to my studying and general learning practices. However it's very helpful with test cases and homework and definitely teaching. The way zyBooks makes the students engage with the material is very benefical. It was an effective way to learn the material. I liked that it was conceptual and interactive. For example, when trying to read an example where a diagram is near the start of the example problem, one is constantly needing to scroll up and down the page, and thus difficult to follow along the example in an efficient manner. The course material is not organized properly with some courses and the required participation activities are sometimes a hassle to complete. So far learning basic coding skills has been easily understandable. Online classes can be difficult, but this was definitely a great resource available. The headers for each section are really helpful in navigating through all of the material, or for navigating to a certain topic. I think that zybooks is a great starting source/reference for learning new materials. If it were just the zyBook, my opinion may be changed. It is very helpful and does a great job making sure the student knows the taught material. You also never talked about memory and underlying representation. What specifically don't you like about zybooks? zyBooks is a good way to learn coding due to its step by step nature. It gives you the hands on experience while also still talking through it thoroughly. I'm very pleased with the interactivity, which helps my engagement. I think it is a helpful resource that allows me to learn at my own pace and work through things slowly without worrying about my grade dropping. zyBooks has a portfolio of course content featuring interactive exercises and animations. I would be happy to see other class in zybook. Less text doesnt mean less learning. I like how zybooks is a hands-on way of learning where I'm applying what I read immediately, which helps to better ingrain the material to my memory. I love it! However, I do believe that some of the feedback messages could have been more descriptive/helpful when writing the practice codes. zyBooks was an amazing service that helped me practice and understand harder topics within this curse, I think that it is a good way to teach the material. I will strongly recommend this learning site to other people. I think I learned a lottt! It was a nice view of the subject covered in this class. Press J to jump to the feed. I have enjoyed using zyBooks. I used it several times to look up questions or to just learn more. I am used to in-class assignments and online assignment messed with me. I love zybooks, I am so tired of using normal text books that take up space and get lost. I love how ZyBooks performs the guided training, then the labs. gives the answers for the challenge problems, so if the user doesn't know the answer, the user will be able to see and understand the problem better, and the user will do better next time. It was of great help when there was something I did not understand about a certain topic. I think it is helpful for me to understand. I still would prefer someone talking through something I think, but for classes that are not extremely difficult I think this works great. zyBook is really amazing and easy to use. I just got done reading their "how to guide" and it provided a lot of thorough steps. 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 was really helpful to see the examples and gave a clear and concise explanation on how the Java works. Zybooks feels easier to understand than I thought it would be. So easy to keep track of assignments and presented the material in a very clear, understandable way. Not to mention the frustration. Very detailed. My favorite of the online textbook solutions. Also providing a few more exercises at the very bottom, both simple and difficult, would be helpful. It provided an intuitive system for extended education beyond the traditional in-class lectures. What is ZyBooks? - Quora zyBooks is a great interactive learning tool that helps fill in the gaps between my lectures. That makes a huge difference. Personally, it's difficult sometimes but I always walk away feeling as if I've learned something. it's kind of annoying to program in these text boxes with no linting or auto completion of brackets/paranthesis, etc. Instructors utilize zyBooks to know students' learning activities on the platform. We understand; money is tight. aeries parent portal madera. I have enjoyed the highlights and activities relation to my courses(i.e intro to programming with Java and C and Machine language), works well and is great as an interactive textbook, I really like the way they teach the subject, i don't know about other subjects yet, but for computer science zybooks is actually very helpful. I think zybook is better than physical books. Goes way beyond traditional textbooks and is much more effective. This, I feel, is VERY opposite the way coding takes place - especially since testing your code is a VERY important part of how a successful completion of a programming goal is achieved - and having no clue what the end result of the desired 'test' is for unit testing results in massive frustration and repeated attempts to push code through the grinder until the right size pieces of code come out. Hi all! That is really useful for me having such a short attention span. It's like an interactive textbook or a virtual professor with which you can learn from at your convenience any time of the day. I love that it is an interactive textbook that checks for understanding in a very helpful way. Canvas integration is good and interactive activities are also nice. Good usefull program that helps with making sure assignments are actually ready for submission. a good source for clearing up the textbook. some instructions can be explained better. I really like how zyBooks is formatted, normally I am really bad with online textbooks, but the fact that there are places to self-test and more dynamic visuals really makes it much easier to learn and remember the information. Zybooks was easy to navigate through and showed me a list of when my assignments were due. 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. Katherine Murphy, Student, Clemson University, zyBooks gives just the right level of content for students learning to program, packaged in an interactive online experience that also allows for instructor customization. I found zyBooks reasonably good at learning complex concepts. it is helpful, especially the demo activities. I especially enjoy the exercises at the end of each section as I use these to study for the exams. Easily 10x better than a standard text book, mainly due to interactive examples and exercises. zyBooks | HelpDesk+ | Baylor University We have providedcourseware to1.1 million students at over 1200 academic institutions,and were growing fast. The material takes a bit to understand, and the question at the bottom is harder and different from what was taught at the top. I've really enjoyed doing the activities as I learn. It has been a good learning tool, however my one complaint is the jump in difficulty from the chapter material to the lab material is a bit steep for me. It help a lot on practicing and familiarizing the computer language. The demonstration helped clear a lot of the new material and also visualize how the code worked to get a better understanding. I really enjoyed the course material and the interactive learning within the course. The way they are now is really dense and difficult to understand. Very useful in a supplement to lectures. Thanks for listening to me then and now! I am paying for it, I should be allowed to keep it. The challenge exercises are good, they keep repeating the basic concepts until they are fully understood by the user, not allowing the user to move on until passing--great idea. It's really thorough and the practice problems help a lot! I really enjoy it. It requires "just right" code input which is absolutely not applicable in the real world, where there are many ways to solve the same problem. This was my first time working with an interactive book and I was able to learn and understand concepts better. That is what tech companies are looking for: people who can think, not just regurgitate whatever they just read. Love the challenge problems and lots of examples. First is a unique experience compare to others third parties learning website. It worked beautifully. It's honestly one of the best learning tools. So worth paying the amount I paid for this class. I stared at and attempted the lab for over 45 minutes before understanding what it asked, but there was no helpful hints on where to even start. increased by I like how the material is followed by exercises to reinforce what was learned. It was such good practice. A good site to practice the material thats assigned, zyBooks was really good for learning C++ because of the interactive examples and animations. The point of this webpage is this: No matter where you land, you will see mostly positive comments. I think it is an amazing platform, it helped me learn a lot! Very easy to use and understandable. ZyBooks interactive features like animations to help visualize key concepts, learning questions which are presented in different formats, and the many tools with minimal text are very beneficial to build skill and intuition. Also, the explanation of the concept is pretty clear. The content was clear, concise, and easy to understand with examples. Very effective learning material. Jose Maya, Student, IUPUI, The combination of online exercises, lectures, and targeted programming assignments, in addition to the book material, provides an effective, multi-tiered approach. We show 1000 responses dont try to read them all (thats too many), but rather we encourage you to jump around. Anonymize references to competitor products (using ___). some of the animations are good, but the explanations are lacking to prepare for exercises, and many small errors or lack of relevant information made for a more difficult learning experience compared to traditional textbooks. 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. It is a great software for students to utilize while taking college courses. However a reminder either through email would have been helpful. The practice sections were very beneficial. Quite intuitive and useful for my learning in that each lesson was comprehensive and interesting. I liked the assignments a lot and helped me to understand coding better. I think its a better alternative to online classes since it explains things relatively concisely however, i prefer actual classes. In coding the labs are overly sensitive to white space, otherwise the textbook is fine. I don't know about other books, but your computer programming 1 book is bad. But not always the case, for certain classes the zyBooks is incomplete, or not a good addition/substitude for lectures. Will the animations and learning questions really help students or are they just gimmicks? Zybooks was very organized and the presentation of the material was very easy to digest. The first textbook I've actually used in my college career. I like the setup. From my experience of using zyBooks, I feel that it is a great tool for learning java. Good, the examples could explain a little more. I am so beyond grateful for having zyBooks for this course. Easy to learn with visuals but not so much with a lot of text. It is very helpful but the challenges and labs are sometimes difficult. Also I love that if there is a question that I don't fully understand I can show the answer and Work backwards if I need to. zyBooks is really a good material to expand my horizon about coding. I feel that is a good resource that is organized well and it helped me to better understand the java language. Made new concepts easy with the interactive slideshows and problems. I think it's really cool to learn like that I like the activities. The way zyBooks explains concepts was great for me. The repetition from typing in answers helps reinforce Java syntax. I really enjoy using the ZyBooks platform. It is engaging and exciting! Dale Reed, University of Chicago, Illinois, I liked how each chapter explained a topic well using examples and that we were also asked to implement what we had just read (in challenge activities) to ensure that we really understood the concept. In other words, even for students who said No to marketing, the comments were overwhelmingly positive. Overall, the participation activities are fine. I appreciate the non-strict learning style. 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. One of the challenge activities gave wrong answers for the questions, and chapter 7 had the sections out of order. I have no problems with the content and learning it. Giving virtual examples of concepts was extremely helpful. Whats the point if i cant go back and read/practice the information anyway. But, students deserve the best learning we can provide. It kept me engaged and it made me actually remember the stuff I learned in the textbook. Once my professor decided to use zybooks I had something that worked for me. Upon switching to zyBooks in 2013, then integrating new zyBook features as they appeared (homework, program auto-grading), and adjusting teaching to use best practices around zyBooks, one sees that the first-year retention rate steadily rose since 2013 to about 90% and has been steady there ever since. Often times could replace a whole class. I thought it was good for learning the material but sometimes the challenges needed stuff to be in a very specific format, which could be tricky. Fun to use because assignments are baked into the reading. It helps students with STEM courseware and improves their subject-matter concepts. I think its the best place to learn even for those does not enjoy reading big books because the book only have necessary objects. Helpful for repeat practice. easy to use and helpful with instant feedback. Really helps retain the knowledge. It provides an easy way for us to study the material. It's just like any other text book except a bit more interactive. It was good, I like how there was no penalization for getting the wrong answer creating better learning environment. zyBooks are great because they are interactive and explain concepts in detail. zybooks is bad - theactiongrouphr.com I enjoy how simple, organized, and straight forward it is. The feedback for each question, whether it was answered correctly or not, is helpful. It was kinda hard to follow at times however, it was easy in the end. zyBooks made it very easy to continue learning during the COVID-19 outbreak because the majority of our class was already based on zybooks. There is some things that may not be taught the same format for coding in the zyBook. I like the interactivity. I like The way topics are explained using video steps. Whenever I did the zybooks to prepare for class or after class, I always felt like I understood the material very well. IT's a fantastic interactive learning platform. Otherwise, I liked it. zyBooks - Build Confidence and Save Time With Interactive Textbooks My first CS class and also my first time using zyBooks. It also provides enough practice with the in-text questions and challenge questions at the end. I usually come up with the solution by looking at the sample code create a similar code. The best online book and homework service. It has been tremendously helpful in teaching me java. Being able to code then and get instant feedback was very helpful! The fact that there are actually things for me to interact with (as opposed to a traditional textbook) helps a lot. Sometimes I have to rush through the activities without really paying attention just to get them done before the deadline (and because sometimes it just feels like busywork), but it's organized in a way that it is easy to go back and find topics when I need to reference them later. When comparing the answer to the chapter, I couldn't figure out how they derived the solution from reading the text. Instructors often wonder if their students will like zyBooks. Our class was flipped, so this is how we learned new material. It was actually just super helpful with the examples, I think there are improvements to be made but they were much better than my other text books. 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. direct entry speech pathology programs near illinois. It was a great way to practice C++ programing skills. very useful especially when we do not have our textbooks. I love zybooks!! Programming is very different from other subjects. The utility is superb. zyBooks Touts 'Less Text, More Action' There were issues in submitting assignments initially. It is alright. It really helps. not much, so far, pleasant experience. Also useful for looking at examples of code for lab assignments and projects. I am disappointed that this wasn't the case. At first I thought having to pay for a book for coding was really dumb since almost all information is available on the internet anyway and my class already has a structure and planning but honestly zyBooks did help nail down some concepts but what it did most was let me see things in different forms then what my instructor did and that gave me a better understanding of how things work and better let me form my own system and ideas on how to format and use code. Easy to use, reading is clear, and the challenges help a lot. It is very helpful and compliments a lecture well. I like it. Ready to see zyBooks in action? A lot of the references to other parts of the book were hard to understand (where the reference was actually pointing to was hard to grasp.) The overall construction of the grading rubrics for code is awful. It's much better than other online textbooks. Broke really daunting subjects down into easier-to-understand problems. It seems like Udacity would be a better option for this program. I think zybooks is very advances and convenient to use depending on how the professor decides to utilize it. It works well paired with in classroom teaching etc. Zybooks is interactive but it would be better if there is a lecture video before the topic and then the interactive section. I'm currently using _____ for another class and hate it. I am enjoying the activities and challenges that are throughout the chapters. This course is teaching students that you must follow code down to the last newline argument instead of rewarding them for creating functional code. Had this been new to me I also believe the layout of zyBooks would make it quite easy to learn. I think zyBooks is a great app to learn about programming, especially beginner programming. The coding challenge exercises are well-executed and help me learn as I am reading. It allowed me to try concepts and questions and get immediate feedback I could learn from, preferred over other textbooks, better value for money. I have access to zybooks anywhere as long as i have a decent connection to wifi. Working at zyBooks | Glassdoor The zyBooks e-textbook is one of the best e-textbooks I have ever used, with progress checks that are actually substantive. I also love that if i get a question wrong I can go back and try again. The animations are also useful. the only thing wrong with it per se is often my Professor would assign homework due on Friday nights and not Sundays. I greatly appreciate that it incorporates extremely import reading material into real assignments, thus providing much more motivation to consume the reading material essential for understanding the subject. Most of my professors major projects revolved around zyBooks, meaning we had to change certain things so they would work in zyBooks. Our interactive animated content is expensive to create and continually maintain. I think ZyBook is great for a course in Computer Science, but I doubt it would work as well for other STEM courses. In fact, try this: Pick a number between 1 and 1,000, and search for and jump to that number in your browser (Ctrl + F on Windows or Command + F on Mac) youll almost certainly see overwhelming positive responses no matter where you look. Very engaging. The labs were also fun! I like it but I sometimes struggle to understand what the free response type questions want specifically. It was highly useful while I had access to it because it provided information in a chronologically manner appropriate to understanding the overall material being discussed. I helps a lot with the explanation of the material and then helping me understand different types of code. It is helpful in learning the material. Some chapters there was no code with functions similar to what the challenge questions were asking. Trustworthy source. I like the interactive exercises compared to traditional textbooks but I like a physical copy of textbooks that I can use without electricity though. I think it helps the student to really learn the material and feel engaged in what is being taught. Useful learning technique. As well as the Lockdown Browser being torment to work with. Only good for learning when its a supplement to actual lecture on the material. The interactive learning segments and in-text quizzes allowed me to really grasp a deeper understanding of the text I was reading. Zybooks is a good way to serve as a textbook for the class i took for it (computer science). It provides examples and a framework for topics that make it easier to learn the material. zyBooks seems like an improvement over most attempts by textbook companies to make me pay to submit my homework, but at the end of the day, that's still what it is. I enjoy that the reading material is essentially also counted as homework for my class due to the included activities. The website is useful with its interactive questions, i dont like it the assignments are too long. Zybooks would be great on its own, however in addition to a bunch of other assignments, it can be overwhelming and I feel like I'm just doing this for credit. I loved the interactive exercises in the textbook, it made it really easy to learn the material. It is a really great platform, I love how hands on it is. Bad meme aside, it's been an extremely helpful and coincidental tool once my instructor strictly transitioned to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We keep the price as low as possible to sustain our efforts. I guess in general it's a great idea and a compelling way to learn content, but for this subject, a lot of the zybook wasn't necessary. Pretty easy to use, although the sensitivity to white spaces was rather unnecessary. but would be value add more separate reading offline access then lab online access. Maybe the instructors and the material tell the student to work things on their computers, and the students that I've got just don't care and try learning relying only on the zylabs. Good source of material, but programming assignments are sometimes too easy. I really enjoyed the zybook material more than a regular book. But many things in life aren't. 95% of the time the program worked well and I was able to learn the necessary content. From Mind to Market: zyBooks | UCR Magazine The sections are also broken up into easily digestible parts. I love this software because it teaches and helps when incorrect answers are input rather than just saying you are wrong. Zybook is very closeminded with answers. 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.