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The official guide to self-study RA courses from ASU, BYU, UIdaho, etc. - jch - 11-10-2023
This year, ASU migrated MAT 117 College Algebra and MAT 170 Precalculus from edX to Canvas LMS and significantly changed how the courses work. Here's my review on the new self-paced versions of these courses.
Provider: Arizona State University Universal Learner Courses
Course: MAT 117 College Algebra (self-paced)
Course: MAT 170 Precalculus (self-paced)
These courses have the same setup, hence the combo review.
Course content: As before, all of the course is delivered via the interactive ALEKS math platform. There are around 300 individual skills in each course, which you will need to demonstrate mastery of. However, ASU has now added much more structure to the courses. In my case, I found the change to be very positive.
Under the old arrangement, you toiled alone in ALEKS until demonstrating mastery of nearly all of the ~300 skills. At that point, the final exams would unlock. Alas, I never reached that milestone back in 2020-21, as the hundreds of outstanding skills felt like an endless slog.
Now, ASU divides the ALEKS content into four units A-D. You begin the course with an initial knowledge check for placement. If you have some familiarity with the content, the knowledge check will likely mark off a large chunk of the skills as mastered. Then you go through each unit, working on the un-mastered skills. ALEKS will require you to get 2-3 questions correct in a row to achieve mastery of each skill. You can jump around within a unit, but I would largely recommend staying with the suggested order. Upon finishing all of the outstanding skills in a unit, you'll take a post-module knowledge check. It challenges your mastery of unit skills and offers you another opportunity to skip out of topics in later units. Finally, you'll take the 20-question unit quiz. Repeat for the three remaining units. The unit quizzes are each worth 10% of the overall grade, the midterm 20%, and the final exam 40%. The ALEKS skills practice and knowledge checks are not graded.
Exam format: The midterm and final exams are both done through ALEKS now, and the question types are the same stuff seen in the skill practice problems. The midterm has 20 questions covering units A & B and the final 25 questions on A-D, with a very generous two hours of time provided for each. Results are not given until the end of each exam. An extensive formula, equation, and property sheet is provided and available during the exams.
ASU now uses Honorlock to proctor both exams, which is the sixth different platform I've used. It's on-demand, with no scheduling, appointments, or fees. Their systems were straightforward and problem-free. I never needed to interact with an actual person. The only hangup is that the software now force-closes all open tabs when starting the proctoring session, but it fails to open ALEKS correctly. You'll need to manually re-navigate to the course site and reopen ALEKS, along with all allowed materials/calculators.
Exam content vs course content/practice exams: The optional practice exams are near exact replicas of the exams, containing the same concepts and question types but different numbers/prompts. You can take the practice exams as many times as you want, or skip them entirely.
Quizzes and exams are on the same ALEKS platform now as the course itself, so there are few surprises with content or answer entry. The instructors provide thorough study guides for both exams.
Time taken on course: These are extremely comprehensive courses. There are a lot of topics in here that were not addressed at all in Sophia's math courses. The ~300 individual skills cover just about everything you could imagine within the domains of Algebra and Precalculus. The courses require you to master all of those skills in order to move on, which takes a long time but sets an excellent foundation for subsequent higher-level math or math-heavy sciences.
Your performance on the initial and post-module knowledge checks dramatically impacts the time required to finish the courses. Brush up on your math skills beforehand, slow down, and take them seriously. If you have a strong algebra background, you'll likely test out of all but a few dozen skills and be able to breeze through the course in a week or so. If you're starting from nothing, set a steady pace where you knock out a handful of skills daily, and you'll be done in a few months.
Familiarity with subject before courses: I was pretty strong until getting to advanced algebra topics, at which point I hit a wall. I previously completed Sophia's college math, college algebra, and stats, the CLEP College Mathematics exam, and TESU's Applied Liberal Arts Mathematics TECEP. However, I found myself hopelessly lost when trying to work through Sophia's precalculus and calculus. I had serious gaps when it came to things like complex fractions, logarithms, exponents, and quadratics.
Pitfalls, high points, things others should know: These may be some of the most forgiving and low-risk graded RA math courses in existence. You can take as many attempts and as much time to master concepts as you need without penalty. The quizzes and exams won't be unlocked until you've demonstrated mastery of all the concepts and show that you're ready to take them on. The graded quizzes can be retaken an unlimited number of times for full points, AND you only need to retake skills/questions you missed. Thus, 40% of your grade is essentially guaranteed points. The midterm and final allow one retake each, but you'd need to take the whole exam again.
Because of the drastic impact of the knowledge checks, I'd strongly recommend learning as much math as you can before starting this course. Use Khan Academy or whatever platform works for you. Then, use the adaptive nature of ALEKS to zero in on your weak points.
ALEKS is also not a great platform for learning things that are completely new to you. The provided explanations tend to be overly terse, skimming over critical principles. I often found myself quizzically staring at the screen when I couldn't figure out how they went from one step to another.
Overall, It's ALEKS: Great that you can skip what you already know. Painful when it makes you drill into stuff you struggle with. Exasperating when you try to understand a complex concept from thin explanations. Empowering when you finally master math, step-by-step.
Take some time to understand and use all of the functions of the semi-clunky ALEKS interface. Don't miss the right-side buttons that provide explanations, watch and learn/Q&A, definitions, etc.
1-10 Difficulty level: 3. The main difficulty comes from the required investment of time and effort to get through everything. For better or for worse, you can't skate through these courses without properly learning the math. However, everything is provided to you in low-stakes baby steps, where you gradually build up your math mastery over time.
Final grade: A