An Interactive Textbook for Material and Energy Balances: Student Feedback and Performance

Textbooks are experiencing a 21^st century makeover. The utility of the textbook has diminished for the digital natives populating higher education today, including the availability of solutions manuals. Therefore, my goal was to create an interactive, web native textbook for engineering students, specifically for a material and energy balances course that introduces students to chemical engineering and its fundamental concepts. A first version included many interactive features, but self-publishing, which keeps costs to the students lower, was not sustainable. A second iteration is now available with a fully interactive experience.

Several unique features distinguish the new book - available from zybooks.com - from traditional textbooks including question sets with scaffolded learning questions, animations, and real time feedback for the student and instructor. The features of the book will be summarized in the talk, but discussed in detail during the Education Division poster session. This talk will focus on student feedback and student achievement during the Spring 2016 semester. With over 100 students using the zyBook for a material and energy balances course, student surveys about the book’s function and features will be explored as well as quantitative participation data and correlation with student performance.