It isn't bad, but I wish the problems were in a bit of a different style, and that all the bugs were worked out fully. Working at zyBooks | Glassdoor Its about the same as a book rental; a scam. Instructors often wonder if their students will like zyBooks. Also, sometimes the explanations can be somewhat bare minimum, leaving me to have to do some trial and errors to figure out exactly what was meant in the explanations. Very straight forward, not challenging while remaining useful. I learn better in a hands-on environment. I learn better through zyBook's example problems, especially when I miss them the first time. 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. For a computer programming course, this works wonders! It's a good opportunity to understand the material easier. A very good platform that could let students interact with the book. This is my first time using zyBooks. Especially considering i have never taken a program class before. There were some homework hosted on zybooks that were very difficult to understand how to do. 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. I think it is an amazing platform, it helped me learn a lot! I used to take an introductory programming course when I was still in electrical engineering but that was structured terribly for first-time programmers. The best way to understand the power and flexibility of zyBooks is to get in andwork with a free evaluation zyBook. I really enjoyed the course material and the interactive learning within the course. I enjoyed it because it helps to learn more about the topics. Very useful for my computer science classes, but the math courses use such intense jargon that it simply takes too long to process. To help, we give temp subscriptions until financial aid is disbursed. It is so organized I know exactly what need to do and can easily see my progress. A subreddit for all questions related to programming in any language. I like the interactivity. At first I was upset because it costs money, but it is so much better than reading a stupid pdf. It is easy to follow and allows you to learn and practice as you read. I think its a pretty good program. Learn more here. Go to Zybooks (or refresh the page). Organized, repetitive, instills learning. 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. The content was clear, concise, and easy to understand with examples. Makes it a lot harder on the student to make sense of all of the material. There some issues on the CS courses when solving for problems. Also it shows you in most cases how it got the answer. I'm currently using _____ for another class and hate it. and had specific due dates for chapters (still not bad!) Very engaging. An easy and effective method to learn the material! useful but show answer made it easy to skip through. It is great in breaking down hard concepts as well as a form of practice. zyboks provided aa way to not only understand the material but to step through the code. It is the best online textbook system I have seen so far in college. The lessons were interactive and easily accessible . It was an interesting way to learn the material. ZyBooks use less text and rely on learning questions, animations and interactive exercises to convey information. I think zybook is better than physical books. We added a section Why whitespace matters, and improved feedback on wrong formatting, which have decreased this complaint. Great way to learn, it is engaging, it makes sense, aids in my understanding. I have no problems with the content and learning it. I thing zyBooks is a good program. If it were just the zyBook, my opinion may be changed. That is really useful for me having such a short attention span. And that's worrying, because there's a lot of really good free resources avaliable on the internet. Has been a very helpful learning tool this semester, really helps break things down. It keeps the material interesting. I did like the fact that I shows you what you need to learn and the trial by error factor. I would be far more successful if there were a more comprehensive text book that accompanied the online course material. This will be shown if an incident or maintenance is posted on your status page. Easy to use, good supplament, doesn't replace good lecture/teacher. I neither dislike or like zybook, but I find the format more useful than other forms of online instruction. I think that zybooks is a great starting source/reference for learning new materials. GitHub - diamondburned/zybooks-mcq: Script to bruteforce Zybooks MCQ I think it's a cool interactive way to learn, but I don't think it's for everyone. zyBooks has been an incredible resource. i enjoy the interactive nature of Zybooks, being able to test the concepts and reference the material at the same time is very helpful. Very effective learning material. However, What I like about zybooks is that there is no correct or incorrect answers for the practice problems, in the sense that we can keep trying until we get it right. It's a helpful interactive textbook for online schooling but with in-person teaching it becomes even more effective. The labs are good. to long and need to be able to go back to the previous easier and better named, helped me learn better than just reading my textbook. I was already very familiar with this material so the zyBooks format allowed me to very easily get through the course. zyBooks is a great platform with a clean interface, useful animations, and great text. I think it helps the student to really learn the material and feel engaged in what is being taught. Many of my friends just clicked through the program randomly until they got a correct answer then moved along. So many online sources don't do that but I like that it encourages students to learn from mistakes. The zylabs were an awful part of the course tho and ended up hurting learning a lot. It was really helpful to see the examples and gave a clear and concise explanation on how the Java works. Even after going through the material several times I still feel lost on the labs. Zybooks/Zylabs is a bad interface for learning programming It is a very useful, easy to use resource for learning the course material. So, we manually examined those responses (we had to skip 240 Nos to total 1000 Yess) and found the negative comment rate was only 8%, which is just slightly higher than the negative rate of the Yess. zyBooks has been exceptionally helpful in learning the requisite material. Zybooks has helpful interactive tools, such as simulations and step by step "videos", that aid in learning the material in class and gaining a deeper understanding of this material. Using zyBooks makes the course easier to learn from and practice the lessons. I think zyBooks is really helpful, I used it for this and a previous class and I learned a lot from it. View historical uptime. Super easy to use, no technical difficulties. I took a C++ class with a normal textbook and I didn't learn anything. 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. The exercises seem good and it takes pressure off knowing there is no penalty. Driving the engine behind zyBooks are instructors who know that students learn by doing. I absolutely love it! Practice problems along side book are quite helpful. 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. within one lesson using zyBooks. I think having the activities throughout definitely helps strengthen and visualize my understanding of the material. ZyBooks gives me a very hands-on approach to learning the concepts illustrated in my class sessions and is relatively simple to navigate, sometimes however I feel like the instructions are a little lacking sometimes and leave me wondering how to do the assigned problem. But students want more, and we get it. I hope have instructors use zybooks more in the future. I love the participation and other activities. Helps to be able to immediately practice the thing I just read. Zybooks is very clear and helpful with ever concept. It's a good way to learn but discourages professors from teaching. 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. ZyBooks was nothing like. The way zyBooks makes the students engage with the material is very benefical. 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. Decent learning, the best advise I can give is that the information at the top seems disconnected from the activities, it might be useful to bring some tips or formulas down to the questions so I feel more motivated to actually use them. I like the organization of the textbook including the animations to demonstrate the subject matter, all in all this is a useful text that should be integrated for all subjects. User interface was my favorite part of zyBooks, very easy to flow through the material and the graphics used for the chapter examples really helped me understand the material I was studying. The textbook stuff is great but the coding sections could be more user friendly. It was a great way to practice C++ programing skills. I thought it was a very good way to help me learn C++. The interactivity and the sample questions makes the learning process much more engaging and efficient. However, until now, everything points to Zybooks (if I have access to the book that's being used, I'll write an update). 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. What would be nice to add in each chapter is a motivation why is it useful to learn that particular thing, where and how is it used etc.. Change your testing methods. Becoming the bad guy. However, in some cases, I feel that with larger coding assignments, zybooks makes life harder for me. 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 do wish that there were examples for the activity questions at the bottom of each section, perhaps just a more formal example. It provided a solid learning process through this unsuspected development. The built in compiler is absolutely amazing. I would be happy to see other class in zybook. I just started my Software Dev degree at WGU in July. It is a lot easier to follow than a regular textbook. i can finish reading offline. 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. Worked well, I think its much better than any of the previous online coding systems Ive used, Loads of information in an easily digestible format. It doesn't just expect you to know how to code a sudoku solver or a maze solver. I thought zybooks was really helpful! Fascinating and shows all steps slowly love it!! This was often frustrating. Very helpful for studying! ZyBooks is an Education solution that StatusGator has been monitoring since March 2021. Was really intuitive and ran smoothly, basically what an interactive textbook should strive to be. The animated examples are easy to understand and help a lot. I feel that is a good resource that is organized well and it helped me to better understand the java language. Zybooks is definitely on the mark when it comes to helping students understand the materials. In coding the labs are overly sensitive to white space, otherwise the textbook is fine. Very easy to use and understandable. Definitions are clear and there is no additional information that might distract students. zyBooks made it very easy to continue learning during the COVID-19 outbreak because the majority of our class was already based on zybooks. I enjoy the interactive activities in the chapters. I would, however, recommend reviewing the order of information. I like the format of teaching and then testing. On the negative, the same forgiving atmosphere that allows for correction also allows for laziness. With these submitted assignments, I was able to better correlate what I actually learned in class with real world usage. its pretty good but sometimes when I feel like im coding to pass tests rather than to code for a purpose. Link: Student survey Basics A loop commonly must iterate a specic number of times, such as 10 times. Reading and homework exercises are well thought. Whenever I did the zybooks to prepare for class or after class, I always felt like I understood the material very well. It is very helpful and compliments a lecture well. I am enjoying the material except zyBooks is terrible. 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. Here is the link to it. Comparing zyBooks with Codio for Computer Science Education I love zybooks. The utility is superb. I have been having an enjoyable time learning the material the way zyBooks presents it. Concise and engaging courseware helps students learn and retain more. Fast learning experience and easy to understand materials. Zybooks is very tedious, but it really helped out with everything I saw in class. I love that it is an interactive textbook that checks for understanding in a very helpful way. 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. I had to mess up methods in my classes in order to get it to pass. We look carefully at feedback from: surveys (as above), the feedback buttons in our content, support tickets, verbal feedback from our interactions with instructors via our sales reps, demos, research talks, and more. its pretty helpful. The animations are also useful. Its helpful could be more helpful with fewer assignments. I love the zybook! Its a good learning tool, but the Challenge Activities dont always function in Firefox and some of the Participation Activities can be bypassed too easily in my opinion. It really helped me learn more about Python. I am so beyond grateful for having zyBooks for this course. 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. It was interactive and kept me engaged. The zyBooks e-textbook is one of the best e-textbooks I have ever used, with progress checks that are actually substantive. Their use, compared to traditional reading, requires less time and is less monotonous, as well as often being easier to understand. It gives you the hands on experience while also still talking through it thoroughly. Easily 10x better than a standard text book, mainly due to interactive examples and exercises. Easy to use, reading is clear, and the challenges help a lot. zyBooks is very helpful and convenient. 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. Often times could replace a whole class. 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. The content was very thorough and descriptive. It as almost self teaching, which is probably the best book I have read since it allowed me to take the interactive mini quizzes and what not during the chapters. a good source for clearing up the textbook. This is my third or fourth zybooks experience and I have always been happy with them. What was the color of Dooku's lightsaber when he was a Jedi? Just another site. I really enjoyed the zybook material more than a regular book. This fall, I'm taking a similar programming class at the university I'm transferring to and I'm 99% sure it's going to be in python. Less text doesnt mean less learning. 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. Anonymize references to professor or university names (using ___). I thought it was helpful. Anonymize references to competitor products (using ___). zyBooks was helpful in reviewing or getting ahead in the class. When we encountered such issues our instructor was able to contact the author of the textbook had have them fix that. I like how the material is followed by exercises to reinforce what was learned. Will students be unhappy about having to pay? It is very resourceful in the way that it is much like the textbooks I would use in grade school but with the accessibility of being online. Zybook is clear and easy to understand. zyBooks is helpful and informative and largely possesses more pros than cons when it comes to learning this material. Zybooks had a very easy to understand and gamified learning experience which made understanding high-level concepts a bit easier. These tools can also be used in an enjoyable way in class to decrease the temptation to . I appreciated the points system and the multiple checkpoints granted for the chapters; however, I wish that some of the content was more linearly explained. I thought it contains super helpful tips and tricks. Presents material in a way that is easy to follow while providing activity questions/examples with amazing explanations as to why an answer is wrong or correct. The interactive portions are awesome and I love the visual aids! They helped me understand concepts on a deeper level through examples. Interface is really intuitive. it presented everything in an organized way and provided interactive material which I believe is essential to learning computer science (as opposed to a normal textbook). However, I felt that a lot of the solutions for the additional problems arent explained to their full extent. I think zybooks is a good resource as study materials to go back and look through briefly, but as a textbook it doesn't translate well for some courses. It helps me learn programming very easily, Good for referencing but tedious and not enough coding, Easy interactability, helpful for computer science course. Some topics are harder to understand than others, but zyBooks does its best to explain it. Reading zybooks is pretty easy too. It is far better than just reading a textbook, and for me actually less time consuming than just reading. However, the only drawback is the price since it's a bit expensive for the use of 1 school quarter only. Far more helpful than the lecture, and was likely the main reason I'm doing as well in the class as I am. I found zyBooks to be a useful supplement to my college lectures. Love the challenge problems and lots of examples. I miss one character in a challenge exercise and the whole thing goes down the tube. Will the animations and learning questions really help students or are they just gimmicks? It is a great way to learn content. So worth paying the amount I paid for this class. It was very helpful and the practice problems were very well designed. 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. I took a programming fundamentals course at the community college I was attending that was on zyBooks. Compared to the hands on platforms like Codecademy, Udacity, etc it does a poor job of explaining the material. I love the concept, particularly fitting for computer science. I love the way the lessons are structured and each topic or concpet has enough examples to help you understand. zyBooks is terrible Hi all! I like it but I sometimes struggle to understand what the free response type questions want specifically. Fun to use because assignments are baked into the reading. I am retaking a Computer Science class that I took last year and failed. Zybook is amazing! I think it is a very interesting and helpful tool. Get a demo today. The only thing I would like different is to have explanations for coding parts that are very confusing. I really enjoy the coding and the test we have to take a part in. The service is nice because I can always go back to the information and review something if I'd like. I really enjoyed the interactive platform and challenge activities made sure I really understood material. It would be helpful if the print function worked. I think ZyBook is great for a course in Computer Science, but I doubt it would work as well for other STEM courses. $75 after the fact as a pop up "oh were gonna use this " is probably the most annoying thing, considering as a college student we pay for literally everything even existing is expensive so 75 dollars plus tax was the icing on top really. It was a great experience and I wish that all of my courses implemented it.