Notes for students

Instructor notes can inform students of due dates, add an instructor's thoughts about a topic, provide links to additional resources, etc.

To add a note, click the "Note" button at the section's top:

Then type in the box that appears at the section's top to create a top-of-section note, OR click any "Add note" button throughout the section in the right margin to anchor the note within the section: 

For either case, when typing a note, you can type plain text, and you can use markdown to italicize/bold text and add links.  Click "Markdown resources" for a Markdown cheat sheet.

Click "Save" to make the note visible to your students. The note appears as a light gray box titled "Instructor note":

Use the pencil icon to edit a note, or the trash can icon to delete a note.

Embedding a video in a note

To embed a video, you can use the <video> tag. The 3 supported video formats in HTML are MP4, WebM, and OGG.  You will need to host the video online (ex.DropBox) in order for your students to access the video. To learn more about embedding Dropbox videos, please see this Dropbox community forum.

<video width="320" height="240" controls>
<source src="https://samplelib.com/lib/preview/mp4/sample-5s.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>

Please note that the <iframe> tag is not supported in instructor notes.

Notes for other instructors

Instructors can leave notes only for fellow teachers by selecting the "Only visible to instructors / TAs" checkbox:

Such notes are not visible to students. For teachers, the notes appear in a darker color, and are labeled "Instructor to Instructor note".  

Notes can be copied across terms, but use sparingly

When an instructor requests a new class zyBook based on a previous term's class zyBook, they can request that notes be copied as well.

However, instructors should realize that our content is improved frequently, perhaps yearly or even each term -- a benefit of digital publishing. Thus, we advise using notes sparingly, because a note made one term may not apply when copied to a new class zyBook having revised content for the next term (and the note's anchor point may even be gone). 

Also, notes are intended for brief comments. To avoid excessive breaking up of an author's intended content flow, notes anchored within a section are limited in length (whereas the top-of-section note may be longer). If on occasion a longer note is truly desired, an instructor can link out to their own content, like to a google doc.