zybooks is bad zybooks is bad

Hi everyone, I'm a online tutor, and I get many SNHU students that are taking CS classes, most of them are having contact with a programming language for the first time (mainly python), and a recurring issue that I see with beginners from this university, is that they are completely lost with really basic concepts (assignment, variables, literals, input/output), and the main culprit seems to be the Zylabs. With more online courses popping up every day, it's easy to see why so many cheaters are on the rise. I even went as far as to go back to the beginning of the semester and redo all my zyBook activities for the knowledge. I really liked zyBooks. Australia. Dont students want a hard copy? Some of the variables it asks for were not booked which made it difficult to understand sometimes what was asked. The C++ module with Professor _____ had labs created by him that requiring skills not covered in the participation and challenge activities. I was using Codecademy but I have some GI Bill left, so I figured I might as well use. Great extra resource to have, though would love for there to be a mobile version. One sees among the relatively-few complaints that our system is picky when grading a programs output formatting. It's easy to navigate and helpful. 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. Very easy to use and the problems provided in the textbook help me practice and understand the material better! I liked that it was conceptual and interactive. I liked it a lot, it helped me study the best I could. I just started my Software Dev degree at WGU in July. I particularly appreciated the zyLabs, but I wish the final chapters had zyLabs as well. I like zybooks quite a bit. The interactive learning segments and in-text quizzes allowed me to really grasp a deeper understanding of the text I was reading. It really helped me learn more about Python. We show 1000 responses dont try to read them all (thats too many), but rather we encourage you to jump around. Helpful lecture content, labs and challenges. Very detailed. I learn more by discussions or other physical interactions. These were assigned homeworks, but they did an incredible job at helping me further understand the material. 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 instructor had a difficult time providing unit tests and other 'test' mechanisms that could help us understand WHAT was wrong with our code other than the code did not pass the tests. Zybooks was easy to navigate through and showed me a list of when my assignments were due. It's more engaging than just reading a textbook and it is really helpful to see these sometimes abstract concepts illustrated/animated, especially for someone like me as a visual learner. I'm ashamed to have done less than I wanted to, but the time I did put into the course I got a lot out of. 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. I have always struggled with math and this year I wasn't doing so well. I noticed that the questions after each lesson tends to be extremely vague at times and I even get asked questions that isn't talked about in the lessons above. 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. They are very informational and the example pictures of code along with the challenge problems are helpful with understanding syntax and actually formatting the code. As a beginner, I have found it teaches me at a great pace and combines reading with practice well. zyBooks combine the power of interactive tools, responsive questions, and animations to provide students with a rich learning experience. Our goal is to continually improve so we can help more students succeed, and more instructors have a better teaching experience too. It really helped me a lot to understand the course and made it really easy. The labs were also fun! It helps me organize what I need to have done for each week which helps me stay organized. 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. Thank you. I love that it is an interactive textbook that checks for understanding in a very helpful way. Will the animations and learning questions really help students or are they just gimmicks? Some of the errors that I got during some labs didn't make any sense. It was nice, for a computer science course, to have an interactive textbook. View latest updates. It is helpful for learning and studying the material in the class, Overall great, but it will be better if there are more explainations, It is overall a good source but the only thing I suggest is adding a chat option with the professor. _brudy 2 yr. ago Whats the desktop IDE? The textbook overall could have used more detail for the contents. I love the search tool. First half was good and then it accelerated a bit fast for me. 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. easy to use and helpful with instant feedback. A good site to practice the material thats assigned, zyBooks was really good for learning C++ because of the interactive examples and animations. But many things in life aren't. Really helps retain the knowledge. within one lesson using zyBooks. The participation activities make sure that you fully understod the concept. It is very helpful, I used it for two semester. I really like it, the labs are very well explained, participation activities keep it dynamic. I really enjoy zyBooks. overall decent but the participating activities need adjustment some of them take more time than they should to go through them just because of the animation and some are just plain repetitive. zybooks does a good job at explaining the material, but doesn't help much when you get stuck on a challenge. Good for learning the material,TERRIBLE for going back to review it again. 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. I also like how the instructors can automatically check you progress which makes the grading process easier. However a reminder either through email would have been helpful. I believe they are helping in making sure that I am comprehending the material. The textbook stuff is great but the coding sections could be more user friendly. It is very easy to log in and complete assignments. Interesting learning tool, can seem dense at times but very useful. Super easy to use, no technical difficulties. I took a C++ class with a normal textbook and I didn't learn anything. It's pretty simple and intuitive, however on some fill-in the blank answers, there were a couple times where it was extremely and unnecessary tedious and frustrating to use. 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. Less text doesnt mean less learning. I am very impressed with this system. At first I was very hesitant to using zyBooks. When I miss something in lecture they are a great way to learn the code. Not only does it help with my classwork, the modules and quizzes are very helpful and I'm grateful that the quizzes show the correct answer. The lessons really help me grasp information needed to pass the class. I love it! Zybooks is the best learning tool i have ever used: 267: It's been a nice applicable method for teaching people programming in Java: 268: It was helpful for learning Java. 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. However it's very helpful with test cases and homework and definitely teaching. Some topics become tedious. I still would prefer someone talking through something I think, but for classes that are not extremely difficult I think this works great. It is easy to learn with and work through questions with. Zybooks helps reinforce concepts taught in class without being overbearing. its pretty good but sometimes when I feel like im coding to pass tests rather than to code for a purpose. While many of my peers felt annoyed by the challenge or participation activities, I felt them to be very helpful to my learning. It was the first online textbook I enjoyed more than physical textbooks. IT's a fantastic interactive learning platform. I think that it's a great educational tool, I like how straightfoward and easy to understand the course material, I enjoyed the challenge questions they provided and the fact that they always bolded key terms in my text. However, would run better with videos and more help on the activity challenges on the bottom of the page. zyBooks is fantastic. I wish the whole entire zybooks sections were graded. Very interesting to see an interactive part as the centerpiece of instruction, Usually turned to zybooks for clarifications from my other lectures. zyBooks has interactive activities that makes the process of learning more interesting, I enjoy working through zyBooks and find it a very good way to learn. I do not have much of an opinion on this. zyBooks is great and it doesn't lag. One of the challenge activities gave wrong answers for the questions, and chapter 7 had the sections out of order. It is unclear when you are supposed to enter your own input or when zyBooks is running the input. Last year, it was a lot harder for me to learn, because we did not use ZyBooks. Easy to use, some chapters missing on explanations. I think it is for the most part good, but there are labs that are far more challenging than what we are prepared for in the lessons. 95% of the time the program worked well and I was able to learn the necessary content. Ready to see zyBooks in action? One of the best designed textbooks (electronic or paper) I have ever used! 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. Really good challenge questions and practice problems. I can just look at the explanation and understand concept better. The interactive parts help me understand the material the most. I really liked the questions that go along with the reading so you are consistently engaged. I really enjoyed the course material and the interactive learning within the course. Online classes can be difficult, but this was definitely a great resource available. The content was very thorough and descriptive. I took another programming class that was a lot harder than this one. zyBooks are designed to work in HTML5-compatible browsers. I neither dislike or like zybook, but I find the format more useful than other forms of online instruction. I love zyBooks but it can be hit or miss with some courses. Nice ui with good activities that help solidify understanding. I dont love the format. I wish there was some more help with labs but overall a great service. It's honestly a very useful tool. It provided a solid learning process through this unsuspected development. Zybooks is a very concise place to get information but sometimes the explanations are too densely written. The active activities do aide in learning the material. second it also helps the instructor on seeing how students in this class do. It would be nice to have more debug data available, however, if the assignment was started and completed well before the due date, the professor was able to help with errors that the compiler threw. The way zyBooks explains concepts was great for me. Easily 10x better than a standard text book, mainly due to interactive examples and exercises. The textbook industry is too bloated with big companies who have little to no interest in actually proving useful material, only to make a buck with forced overpriced textbooks. It was fine to use but not my favorite way to learn. It's honestly one of the best learning tools. All content is posted anonymously by employees working at zyBooks. And monitoring students progress is an excellent instructor tool. The labs are good. The platform is very easy to follow. Though I would love if there would be an easy way to access table of contents at the left side of the screen so I can open it even when I am doing the chapters. The interactive content helped me develop a better understanding of C++. Work is also explained thoroughly, which helps to correct mistakes that may have happened. It does not need to be severe, just enough to encourage people to actually read the material. I really enjoyed the zybook material more than a regular book. I thought it contains super helpful tips and tricks. Zybooks modules enhanced my learning and understanding. I deeply appreciate the information and comprehension questions being baked together. I really appreciate the interactive style of learning through zyBooks it has really helped me learn with a more hands-on approach. I appreciated the way examples can be generated to ensure you can practice as long as you want. It was helpful to have the resource of zybooks to go back to in order to remember information and study but I would not consider it a tool when first being introduced to new course content. I liked the interactive element of zyBooks, however for the assignments there were some elements that sometimes felt redundant or too time-consuming. I am using another textbook for this course as well and I find the other book to be more straightforward. I absolutely love it! Easy to use, has little fluff text, and provides great visualizations for complex concepts. I've never had an issue when using zyBooks. I'm the type of person who learns from being given problems to understand how equations/methods work. Its an interactive textbook which makes it faster to learn how to visualize code in real time and allows you to code as you learn. A very good platform that could let students interact with the book. I am not just learning it because I need to for my class, but I am actually WANTING to learn it. the website and platform is organized very well, it is easy to read and functions well. 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. Personally, it's difficult sometimes but I always walk away feeling as if I've learned something. I think it was better than reading the textbook by myself.