Personalise your math tutoring with ALEKS

In my experience, most math products start you off with a placement test. This will tell you the book or books you should purchase to start your child at the right level. As they then work through these books, there are fluctuations in known and unknown work, resulting in time spent doing exercises of review which could probably be skipped over in favour of those areas that still need actual learning. Or, there may be areas of learning that you'd prefer to have more problems to practice.

What if you could go through those math books and cross out all the known questions, or just leave a couple of those questions in as a refresher? What if you could 'double' the practice questions for areas that require more training? What would you do if your child then learnt a new concept, but understood it quickly and just wanted to move on instead of spending 1/2 hr doing practice examples? How would you feel if I told you there IS a program that can be tailored to exactly what your child needs and all it takes is a quick 15 minutes online assessment before they can dive right in and complete those lessons?

Okay, I'm a bit excited as I have just finished having a play with this program from ALEKS and the potential to help your child grasp math concepts in a fun, motivating way is very exciting.  Maestro had a go at it also; Mariposa hasn't as yet.  We had a time limit of a month's free trial, but it happened to fall in our busiest time, so the playing was pretty much left to me during the quiet hours of the night ... and even I learnt a number of things! (smiles!)

So, exactly what is ALEKS? Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces:

a Web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system that uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and doesn't know in a course. ALEKS offers truly individualized instruction that meets the student at her learning level and instructs her on the exact topics that she is most ready to learn. As a result, no two students will experience the same learning path while working in ALEKS.

ALEKS is designed for grades 3-12. It targets the student's current learning after the initial assessment.  The highly-intelligent system can see information already known and where the student should move to next. I did find that some of the 'required to learn' areas after my assessment were review, but that was probably as I'd answered some of the questions incorrectly, or a misunderstanding with terminology, therefore the review didn't hurt at all.

Example of assessment page

The assessment will produce a pie graph with all the course parts.  Hover your mouse over each coloured piece of the pie and a list of topics the student is ready to learn next appears in a pop-up box with active headings.  As each part is completed, the pie section is coloured in more with the darker shade.  This 'filling in the pie chart' is very motivating!

If using this with more than one child, the direction they each take is very individual.  This is something that math books cannot do.  The program acts as your child's personal tutor, taking the time to work through questions in a particular area as long as required until mastered.  These are examples of a pages showing "Learning Mode" (click to enlarge) :

Measurement questions are asked in both metric and imperial.

Extra practice sheets may also be printed off by students, each uniquely generated for their current knowledge.

When a topic is mastered, you don't have pages of problems to keep working through, either.  No, you just have to prove you can answer a minimum number of questions correctly and then move on.  Should a question be answered incorrectly, immediate feedback will be given. The student can then select "Explain" for all the details right there on the screen.  Attempt some more questions and then keep on moving along!

 

Immediate feedback.

Explanation with practice as long as needed.

Another fun feature is the mastery program for multiplication, division, addition and subtraction. This is called Quicktables and involves some fun games with built-in rewards.

When you open an account with ALEKS, you will also have a Master Account. The parent / teacher using this can easily access the student's account to see the level of progress and print off reports. You can track how often each of them are using the program and the areas on which they're working. Quizzes are also available, and you can print these off as assessment records. Automatic reports are also sent to you via email.

  

Please click on these if you'd like to see enlarged.

I recommend reading the 12 page pdf report on 

"Getting the Most Out of Your Master Account" 

for more information.

The quickest way to introduce this to you properly is with this 2 minute video, so I hope you'll feel free to have a look at it.  A comprehensive course library is viewable, showing all the learning areas incorporated into this product, right through to Pre-Calculus, as well as some of the Higher Education subjects.

If you're looking for a personal tutor, for a month, 6 months or a year, there are a variety of payment plan options.

• $19.95US per student per month
• $99.95US per student per 6 months
• $179.95US per student per year

 Family discount options are also available.

This product is available for a free trial over 48hrs via the site, but I am honoured to be able to share an extended trial period to my blog readers! Click the button below and you have an opportunity to trial it for ONE WHOLE MONTH just as I did (that's $19.95US value for FREE!)





Use this trial at a time when you know you'll have time to benefit from it, and I hope you'll find this product as well designed and fun as we have!

NB - I received this product from TOS for the purpose of review. There is no other compensation and the opinions are my own. Thank you to TOS and ALEKS for the use of this product. If you'd like to read further reviews on this product, please click HERE.