I love using this app on my iPad when I can’t really take out my computer/bring it with me. I like having the ability to access my textbooks, and there’s definitely great features to it like highlighting, commenting, flashcards, etc. That being said, those features definitely could use some refining. When I go to highlight, it’s not always accurate and it just looks funky. It can be pretty frustrating to try to highlight and then also see how weird it looks afterward. I wish there was a more natural swiping action for when you do want to highlight. Also, what’s up with the zooming in and out? Any time I try to zoom in, it takes me to the next page over or so. If I want to zoom in on a specific paragraph that’s like a half inch in size on my iPad screen, the whole app just goes haywire and takes me to the next page. That’s a pain when I’m going over math equations since they’re so tiny and I always need to zoom. Also, once I’m finally zoomed in enough that it the app doesn’t go crazy and look like a wizard turning pages in a spell book with magic, I’ll try to use 2 fingers to slide over to the next problem (from left side to right side of the page), it also thinks I’m trying to turn the page rather than just slide over a bit. I love this app, but I really would like that to get fixed and I’m sure I’m not the only person with these frustrations. Overall, great idea and app minus those few issues.

Pearson has great functions like being able to write flash cards or take notes. It also has audio so you can listen to the text. But they really need to improve the programmed voice to not say things like “underscore” over twenty times when reciting end of chapter questions that have five blanks in it for answers. She (the voice) also fails to pronounce the phonetic pronunciations of terms offered in the book. It’s very awkward with her saying one syllable then spelling the next. She’s clearly an automated voice that they turned loose on the text with no edits. For auditory learners this is problematic. Her tone however, with the exception of some oddly pronounced words, is rather decent. They do need to program her to pause after a dash but over all it’s tolerable between her fumbling through headings, outlines and bulleted lists. Forget about hitting to enter to start a new line with flash cards. When you save it it will smash all the words together anyway so if you need to make a list of things, you’re screwed. I still like the lady and her intonation, but she’s not a replacement for the texts and a big company like Pearson should really work on the accessibility for people who need the audio. One last thing, it needs a button to go full screen with the interface so you aren’t on dark mode with your toolbar and tabs headlighting you.

I teach several courses per semester and have done so for more than 15 years. I adopted MyMathLab early on after moving to Pearson, and this app is now the third attempt by Pearson to provide a digital textbook for the courses I teach. The apps continue to improve despite some irritating setbacks. You would think that after so many years, I would be able to arrange the order of my books? (thank you for allowing this in MyLab with the pin and drag options). And when will the duplicates end? It should not be so difficult to locate the book that I want to use. My biggest complaint, though, is the syncing of the app with the website. You would think that this would be a nice feature but it makes it impossible to “hold my finger on a page” to answer a students question and then go back to where I was on the exercise page. And as an instructor, or tenured professor to make the point, I shouldn’t have access to textbooks removed because the MyLab course expired. I used to have contacts at Pearson who set access privileges for some of my textbooks, which migrated over to this new app. But it was a hassle and I don’t have the patience to go through this again. Overall, I appreciate having the app for my iPad. I just wish it were more useful and better suited for instructors.

It hurts my heart that I had no choice but to spend $130 on this etext, because I needed the proprietary statistics software that came with it to complete my assignments. I guess when students have no choice but to buy a software product, the product manufacturer isn’t then inclined to keep that software updated and user friendly. For one thing, there is no turning the phone for a wider view of the tiny text. Only vertical, sorry. And when you try to zoom in it is jumpy and unpredictable, and you’ll likely lose too much text so just keep it tiny and vertical and deal with the headache you will inevitably get. The desktop software isn’t much better. Search function is awful - sometimes terms will come up but when you click on them… nothing. No action. Does it at least tell you what page the term is on? Nope. Tough luck. Try google. And then you can’t zoom OUT - this is wild. I can’t fit the page on one screen/browser. And there are these little ‘tips for success’ on the sides of the pages that narrow the margins, making one long column when what would actually be user friendly is a nice square of text that perfectly fits one page into the browser window. I just don’t understand how this expensive platform can be so bad all around. Is anyone trying at all? Had anyone at Pearson actually tried to use these texts? Cmon guys. Quit robbing people. We’re students, for chrissakes!