ALEKS free for two months (start by April 30, 2020)

[dfrecore]

ALEKS sucks

I haven't taken any of them and barely know anything about their platform, so do you have anything more substantial to explain why? I completed Sophia's math courses on a whim recently; I thought that while the overall presentation and ease of demonstrating what you already know were both high points, the lack of practice problems could be troublesome for students learning the material for the first time.

I tried ALEKS twice, my daughter tried it and a couple other kids I was helping and all I can say is that no one liked it. Maybe I’ll give it another try if they changed the format but I’m more of a textbook and lecture person (which is why I like SL). ALEKS would probably be better for someone with lots of prior knowledge or taken as a supplement with a class.

There was another kid in my neighborhood who finished Sophia, but when I would quiz him, he was lost and confused due to Sophia not having enough practice problems. I found the same issue with Khan academy. 

What wound up happening is that I purchased my high school algebra book on amazon for $10.00 and had my daughter go through every single question from cover to cover, then we just used Sophia as a test out (they had a huge sale at the time). The whole process took a year due to her being only 14 years old at the time. Also, textbooks are less distracting for some ppl, whereas newer digital textbooks have a lot of videos, and interactive stuff that was far too distracting for my daughter. So for something like math, it is my personal opinion, that the best way is sometimes the old ways.

For what it’s worth, I see that ASU EA algebra is ALEKS based, so some ppl might enjoy that.

I agree with all of this - online math like ALEKS (my son is doing College Algebra through EA/ASU) is REALLY hard to learn from.  We homeschooled, and used VideoText Algebra, which is kind of like Khan Academy (it's video-based instruction) but there are books to go with it, and TONS of great practice problems.  I feel like my son really, really got a solid knowledge of algebra that just doesn't exist with ALEKS or Khan or anything else where you don't have the problems to do.  Math NEEDS practice, for some people, the more, the better.  Just learning the concepts isn't enough, you need to do lots of practice problems with each concept to solidify it in your brain.

The only reason we are doing College Algebra right now is to make sure there aren't any "holes" in his knowledge after switching curriculum several times, because the EA/ASU is free right now.  He will then do Pracalc as well.  He's in Math 3 w/Precalc right now in high school, and the curriculum leaves a lot to be desired, so if he can't pass it with an A pretty easily, then I'm concerned that he won't be ready for AP Calc I next year - especially with being out of school for a long time.

Anyway, I'm not expecting ALEKS to teach him much, and if there's a lot that he needs to learn, then we will switch to another program over the summer to make sure that he is solid before he starts Calc.  It will be something where there are a lot of practice problems to do, and he will do them by hand on paper at the kitchen table, so that I can SEE that he understands what he's doing.  He wants to be an engineer, so he really needs to understand the math well.