Please note: zyBooks offers a line of products called zyVersions. Unlike a traditional zyBook, which is written from scratch by our in-house authoring team, a zyVersion is a conversion of an existing product, usually a Wiley textbook or Wiley+ material.
Traditional zyBooks are written with the intention of assigning all challenge activities in a given section.
Some zyVersions provide additional challenge activities, giving instructors the ability to pick and choose which challenge activities to assign. Please note that the authors of the zyVersions do select a set of activities to be optional by default, such that instructors do not need to make any changes if they do not wish to.
- Which subjects offer the "Optional challenge activities" feature
- How to toggle a CA as optional or not optional
- What do students see / how is this reflected in their scores
Which subjects offer the "Optional challenge activities" feature
The optional challenge activities feature is turned on by default in any zyBook that covers a subject on the following list. This feature does NOT need to be requested. We will not turn this feature on for any subjects that are not listed below.
- Basic Engineering Circuit Analysis, 12e
- NI Circuits (3e) - Interactive Edition
- Fundamentals of Materials Science and Engineering: An Integrated Approach (6e)
- Engineering Signals and Systems (2e) - Interactive Edition
- Material and Energy Balances
- Materials Science and Engineering: An Introduction (10e)
- Circuits (Calculus)
- Applied Statistics and Probability for EngineersR5
- Control Systems Engineering (8e)
- Control Systems Engineering (8e) with zyLabs
Also note that this feature is ONLY available for activities labeled as challenge activities.
How to toggle a CA as optional or not optional
First, navigate into a section that contains challenge activities. Then scroll to a challenge activity to begin.
Click on the "..." button at the top of the activity.
In the menu that appears, select or unselect the checkbox for "Set as optional".
or
Updating the checkbox will trigger a save button at the bottom of the page.
Continue to scroll through and modify the optional setting on as many activities as desired, then click "Save" to save the final changes.
A label will either appear or disappear indicating that the activity is now set to optional, or is no longer set to optional.
Please be sure to ask students to refresh the page after any changes are made. zyBooks does NOT refresh dynamically so any students who had the zyBook open before the change was made will see the original status until they refresh.
What do students see / how is this reflected in their scores
When a student is in a section that contains optional challenge activities, they will see a label on any activity that has been marked as "Optional". Similarly, activities that have not been set as optional will not contain the label.
Students are able to work on CA's that are set as optional, if they desire, and a checkbox will still appear if they complete the challenge activity.
From the activity dashboard for a student, students will be able to see whether they completed an optional CA or not by expanding the chapter and section they wish to drill into.
Alternatively, for activities that are not set to optional, students will see what percentage of the activity they completed.
"Optional challenge activities" in assignments
For a full overview on creating assignments, please see How to create/edit an assignment.
When selecting a section that contains challenge activities, a message will indicate if the section contains optional CA's.
The number of activities/points available only reflects non-optional activities.
When a student is in a section that is part of an assignment, they will have access to an assignment summary at the bottom of that section. This summary will indicate which activities are optional/not as well as let students know how much work they have completed in the non-optional activities.