Sapling Learning

I made this account with the sole purpose of preventing people from ever using this pathetic excuse for a program to torture their students. If you do not want them to learn and want them to feel anxious and stressed about ridiculous questions, then this is the site for you. I wanted to take time out of my day to warn people how flawed and terrible Sapling Learning is. I have used many online HW programs over the years, but this one by far is the worst program for HW maybe in the history of online HW programs. I just spent over an hour on a single problem that had 12 different parts and consisted of three separate questions. It is miserable. I was genuinely looking forward a chemistry class, but thanks to Sapling I legitimately dread doing HW because of the ridiculous amount of time it takes me to complete the problems. I know that the teacher assigns the problems sometimes, but the fact that there are 20+ problems on HW plus the fact that some of these problems can take 20+ minutes puts a lot of stress and anxiety on a student. There are not partial submits, the hints are pathetic, and the system is overall dreadful. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS

I am a student, and I made this account solely to beg anyone considering using this tool to not do so. I’ve used it for two semesters now, and here are the major problems with it that make it virtually unusable

1) Despite being a chemistry teaching tool, the function to draw lewis structures, molecules, etc, is incredibly difficult to use. To the point where I get questions wrong even when I know the answer, because I just can’t figure out how to draw it in the window. Not user-friendly at all, and here’s a tip for the developers: if your drawing tutorial is 20 pages long, YOU’VE DONE IT WRONG

2) When you get questions wrong, it’s supposed to give you a hint. These hints are not helpful, and usually have nothing to do with what you actually messed up. They seem to be generalized, targeting what they probably think are the most common mistakes. If you haven’t made one of those, but it’s still wrong, you’re basically out of luck. Not a learning experience at all

3) IT’S SO EXPENSIVE?? For what? I’d understand if it was good software and a good tool, but it really really isn’t.

In conclusion, I’m continually mystified as to why this tool is pushed by my professors. I can only conclude my university has cut some kind of deal with Sapling, because there’s no actually good reason to buy it unless you enjoy throwing $75 away every time you need an access code

I am a high school student enrolled in a dual credit Chemistry course with a local college and I have never seen such a poor program used for assignments. The program does not tell you how you are wrong when you submit an answer, and the hints and feedback seem snide and backhanded. The hints do little to nothing to help you if you do not know where to begin with a question, and the feedback (after you get a question incorrect) seems to only make the student feel inadiquite, or ignorant. The program at times even uses incorrect answers, such as the problem that made me write a review. As a highschool student using the program, it made me question if I was even taught the subjects at all with their terminology, and poor question wording. The site itself also has poor UI and layout. I would never recomend this program to anyone, and I am appaled that it is in such common place in academia. How professers, and teachers have missed these glaring issues is beyond me.

I’ve never seen a tool so widely used miss the mark by this much. I’m in second-semester Chemistry at UC Berekely and I just can’t understand why even after semi-regular updates the website consistently fails me and my peers at every turn. The questions it asks are often totally obscure and include HORRIBLY phrased strange exceptions to rules that you will never see on any exam you will take in your life. You will try to solve these questions and, in doing so, end up far more confused than you were in the beginning. This site can make you feel inept and furthermore damage your academic confidence, which isn’t something many college students can afford as this stuff is already difficult enough. Success breeds motivation and motivation, success — Sapling rarely awards me either. Why Sapling is a tool utilized at the level of University is mind-boggling to me — the company itself is just as out of touch as the professors assigning it.
I would rather be shot in the leg than unironically recommend this to someone.

TLDR: Sapling is a very poor system that puts forth no focus on the basics of chemistry and instead focuses on complexities and rarities that will make you work far harder than you should so soon and will only confuse you; Does not explain anything at any point in any comprehensible way, not even accidentally.

I created an account on this website for the sole purpose of reviewing this program. I am in general chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville and for some reason they like to use this program. First of all, it is way too expensive for what it is, the program is very simple and has way to many bugs, more like a beta program if you ask me, not something that should be used at a university level for graded assignments, and most definitely not something you should pay for. The feedback this programs gives back if you get an answer wrong is completely unhelpful, so you get no points for the question, and are just as confused as before, which to me, defeats the purpose of even trying the problem. The answer box for the problems is also very laggy, sometimes I have to click on it four or five times before it lets me type my answer. The formatting of your answer is also very precise. Don’t have a capital letter where the program does? wrong. Answer off by .0001? Zero Points.

In short, online homework was made to be the next step from written assignments in the evolution of homework, yet I feel answering these questions using Morse code on a rusty pipe would be preferable to this sad excuse for a program

I am currently a college chemistry student and use this program on a weekly bases. My opinion of this program is extremely negative. The rage that is induced when I attempt to use this is immeasurable. The answer you put down must be exactly what is in the program because if you are off by even .001% it will mark it wrong and make you believe there is something wrong in your procedure when there is not. Rather than accepting that a student knows how to do a type of problem but uses a different number of sig-figs, it will tell you that you did something wrong and not that you used the incorrect number of digits when either calculating or reporting. I do not recommend this program at all.

I’m an Econ student and in class I genuinely enjoy the subject. However, this website is terrible. So many of the questions are about concepts not in the book or from different chapters, sometimes the website will mark me wrong when I’m just not, the mechanics aren’t good at all, it crashes constantly, and the hints, more often than not, seem more like back handed insults than hints, and even when they’re not insulting they still aren’t helpful. The website never tells me what I did wrong only that I am wrong and there is no learning curve. This site is terrible, the mechanics are hanky, it crashes, it glitches and will say right answers are wrong and constantly asks you to do things that the book never covers or didn’t in that chapter. Also, I know for a fact that I would have a far better homework and test grade if my assignments were packets or a website more compitently made than this. If you can avoid this site do, it’s not worth anyone’s time.

I am a chemistry student using sapling learning, and I had to just now stop in the middle of my homework to create an account on this website just so I could write a review on how absolutely garbage sapling learning is. I have never run into a worse UI, nor have I read questions written so poorly in my life. I cannot even begin to give constructive criticism on what this site needs; it is the worst learning tool I have ever used, and I have no idea why it is used anywhere. I would never recommend this site to anybody in a million years.

I am a chemistry student and I absolutely despise sapling learning. It is so unhelpful and the questions it asks are vague and confusing. I dislike this site so much that I stopped my assignment just to create this account and write a review for how much I hate this site. There is absolutely no room for mistakes, which there is a lot because of how specific sapling wants your responses to be. There is so much wrong with this site that I can’t even begin to describe how bad it is. I would never recommend this site to anyone.

I am a student in chemistry class currently using sapling, and this is the first website I’ve seen to review sapling from a consumer perspective. I hate using sapling for chemistry. There’s very little learning curve, it’s difficult to enter in chemical equations, and the homework questions often through in complex unrelated questions rather than building on concepts. Rather than teach the basics, the questions often seem to focus on strange exceptions as if to say to say to students, “see how much smarter than you we are”? Why not focus on the basics and build up? It’s a very poor system that when correcting me usually does not tell me WHY I was wrong, only that I am wrong.