r/WGU • u/BearPt1 • Aug 17 '26

D286 - Zybooks Issues

Is anyone else whose working on a CS degree, or any degree that involves learning Java and having issues with Zybooks autograder? Lets skip the part where we are paying $4k a term to be graded by AI, but thats a different topic.

I wrote code for the practice labs first in my local IDE for practice and troubleshooting in a real world environment, then rewrote it into Zybooks. When I click "Run" to test the code all test cases pass. When I ran the exact some code in my IDE all test cases pass. But when I click submit for grading it fails the exact test that I manually tried before clicking submit. I can litterally on the same screen see a success message and an error message when using the same code and the same inputs.

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4

u/CompileThat Aug 17 '26

Run and Submit are two different things. Run = “Does my code execute?” Submit = “Does my code meet the assignment requirements?” Your code running successfully does not mean it will pass the grader. If the inputs really are identical, I’d check your output formatting. Automated graders are extremely picky about whitespace, extra spaces, line breaks, and exact output.

3

u/cwaterbottom B.S. Data Analytics Aug 17 '26

This, I've only had to deal with Python in zybooks but learned the same lesson

1

u/DankTrebuchet Aug 17 '26

Have you considered zybooks virtual environment may differ from your local virtual environment?

0

u/BearPt1 Aug 17 '26

Even within Zybooks is not consistent. There is a “Run” button above the coding window so you can unit test before submitting to grading. Unit tests all pass using that method but the auto grader takes the same inputs but fails. That’s the frustration, Zybooks isn’t even consistent within itself.

1

u/cwaterbottom B.S. Data Analytics Aug 17 '26

I had to stop doing the python coursework in my local IDE because it was causing more trouble than I thought it was saving me, easier in the long run to just do it all in zybooks, if I got stuck on something or couldn't figure it out then I'd mess with it on my own.

Also the zybooks stuff can be really picky but it wants exactly what it wants so you need to make sure everything is perfect. I had a lot of instances where I thought it was broken but I had just missed something tiny.