ALEKS

ALEKS is a site that teachers are using to try to educate their students in math. But is it really even a good site? And are students even really learning with it? I think perhaps it might be valuable toward math education for students.  This is an issue worth exploring.

Last year, our math teachers here at McDowell went to a math conference. That’s where they found out about ALEKS. In ALEKS, the students are given a math problem, and they are told to solve it. If they solve it correctly, they move on. If the students get it wrong, they move back a step, but they have the option to try again which means that students are getting the benefit of immediate feedback. Back to the sequence of Aleks, if the student solves the problem correctly then, he or she moves forward one step again (back to where he or she was before the error was made). If the student works the problem wrong again, he or she goes back yet another step. If a student happens to get stuck on a problem, then he or she can click the exclamation button. As a result, ALEKS shows the problem to the student being worked out in steps, but it doesn’t count for or against the student’s score. Most topics have two or three steps, and we McDowell students are assigned 12 topics a week.

Every once in awhile, you will get a knowledge check, and you can not skip it. A knowledge check is basically a test that can improve your pie chart. Your pie chart is simply a scale of how ALEKS assesses your mastery of the math principles being reviewed.  After your knowledge check, your number will go up based on how many questions you answered correctly.

In my opinion, ALEKS isn’t too hard ( unlike other educational  websites like IXL!). It tries to find the perfect questions to ask you which is pretty nice. Usually, you don’t get too many frustrating problems. It actually reinforces all that you are learning and gives the student meaningful practice and confidence in the math steps.  But that is just my opinion. Also, it is a good review tool. I don’t know that I would call ALEKS fun, but it is practical and useful. Likely, it is one of the least painful ways to practice math skills.

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