Effectiveness of Online Web-Native Content vs. Traditional Textbooks

The sudden eruption of a global pandemic has conveyed enormous changes to college campuses. Universities had to suddenly switch to virtual learning and this shift appears to be here awhile. While different disciplines vary in their degree of ease in adapting quickly to a new mode of teaching, the faculty has to be innovative in using available technology to successfully switch to remote teaching, while keeping or increasing even further the efficiency of conveying the content of their courses. Faculty at xxx University teaching "Computational Tools for Engineering," a freshman-level 2- credit hour course covering both Microsoft Excel and MATLAB programming, resorted to "zyBooks," a new kind of learning content, created specifically for the modern web. zyBooks is a web-native interactive content which aims to help students learn challenging topics, with auto-grading that saves instructors time, and leads to better-prepared students in class — putting the fun back in learning. In addition, it uses animations to dynamically illustrate complex concepts. zyBooks can include configurable embedded coding environments that allow students to work with real code, on the fly. Students are assigned two different types of homework. One homework, entitled "Participation Activity (PA)," is due at the beginning of the class (flipping the class content). The second one, "Challenge Activity (CA)" is due a week after synchronously covering the content of each chapter online by the faculty. This paper will provide an assessment of students' performance on quizzes and exams for the MATLAB section of the course taught in Fall 2020, compared to previous semesters where students were taught face-to-face using a traditional textbook. A summary of students' perceptions will be provided based on extensive surveys and questionnaires comparing web-native interactive content with the use of conventional textbook.