Why zyBooks authored content/non-lab activities cannot be hidden
Students who purchase/subscribe to a textbook generally expect to have access to the full textbook for the entire term. They want the option to read ahead, which has learning benefits, and gives students "agency" over their learning -- an important educational principle. As such, the zyBooks team does not support the hiding of content sections from students.
That being said, zyBooks does allow instructors to
- remove content
- set sections as "Optional"
- hide custom instructor-created content
- hide zyLabs
Instructors also ask if they can hide specific Challenge Activities (CAs) within sections. Our model of CAs is different from traditional homework systems, which might create a large pool of problems from which instructors select a subset to best match their selected content sections and to reduce cheating. Instead, our model is to create just the right set of CAs suitable for homework and integrate those directly into content sections, thus freeing instructors from the selection task, and enabling us to analyze and continually improve the CAs.
Plus, we are aggressively seeking to create CAs that generate randomized problems, thus decreasing cheating as well. However, we are still considering the possibility of allowing instructors to remove certain CAs. And, if you only want CAs completed in a certain week or hour or other time window, when you run an "activity report" you can specify a start time, in addition to an end time.
Unused content
An instructor can configure a zyBook, and in doing so move some content sections to Unused, but that is intended to be done once before the term -- students never see content in Unused so don't feel "loss", as they still see a "complete" set of chapters for their course.
A few instructors have asked for easy ability to "unveil" chapters to students during a term. But, doing so prevents students from reading ahead. And, students see hidden chapters (or a book with just one chapter) and get upset when they paid for a "textbook" but don't have full access to it. In fact, several years ago one of our engineers introduced the feature for instructors to block chapter access to students, and when some instructors used that feature, students got *extremely* upset (a case of humans' well-known "loss aversion"). Given the pedagogical benefits of reading ahead, the importance of student agency, and the fact that students get upset having paid for "textbook" content they cannot access, we do not provide easy ability to unveil chapters -- in this sense, a zyBook is like a traditional textbook, in which the student can access all chapters.
Note: The "Unused" chapter (invisible to students) does not maintain the original chapter grouping or ordering of the content sections moved there, because Unused is essentially a trash can. If you change your mind, you can move a content section from Unused back into a normal chapter, but such instances are expected to be rare.
Published vs Unpublished
Any zyLab content or custom instructor-created content can be set as either "Published" or "Unpublished".
Unpublished sections appear in the table of contents but contain a label indicating they are "Unpublished"
Students can navigate to an "Unpublished" section, however, they will not be able to preview the contents of the section until it becomes "Published". Below is a screenshot of what a student see when navigating to an unpublished section.
Unpublished sections can also be included in assignments, however, as noted above, students will not be able to work on the sections until the sections do become published.
When creating a custom section, options are available at the bottom to "Save and publish", "Save", or "Cancel".
- Save and Publish saves any changes and makes the content available to students.
- Save will save an instructor's changes but will not make any of the content in the section available to students.
- Cancel will revert any changes back to the initial state.
To modify the Publish/Unpublished state of an existing section or a zyLab, navigate to the section itself and use the toggle options in the top right hand corner.
Can content be published or unpublished in bulk?
At this time zyBooks does not offer a way for instructors to publish/unpublish sections/labs in bulk. The zyBooks support team can assist with bulk publish/unpublish needs. Please email support@zybooks.com and let them know which sections you would like to modify.
Scheduling zyLab/custom content to be revealed at a specific time in advance?
To learn more about scheduling content please see
- Can I set a start date and end date for a Classic zyLab?
- Access Controls in Instructor Created Sections