The Impact of Adding an Interactive Textbook on Student Performance and Satisfaction in a Freshman Introduction to Programming Course

This “Research to Practice” work in progress presents the results of a study of the impact of an interactive textbook on student learning and satisfaction in a freshman introduction to programming course taken by both computer engineering and electrical engineering in the spring of 2017. To enhance student performance in our Java course as well as increase their satisfaction, an interactive textbook for Java Programming from zynante.com was added to the set of required materials to see if the reported learning gains [1, 2] would be repeated. Comparison is made between the spring 2017 cohort and the 2016 and 2015 cohorts who did not use the interactive textbook. Comparisons include (1) the percentage of students withdrawing from the course; (2) the distribution of final grades; (3) review of final exam performance, and (4) student evaluations of the instructor/course for the three classes. The results are unsupportive of an increase in student learning.