Am I the only one who struggles with Aleks?

[MN456]

You are not the only one. I took my first assessment on a trial account a week ago and scored something ridiculous like a 25%. Then I went ahead and started a real account, using mathway throughout the assessment and still only scored like a 55. I'm glad you already made a thread because I have a couple questions.

Does anyone know if there is any sort of penalty for requesting assessments over and over again? I wonder if I could get lucky and just fall into a set of questions I'm familiar with...but ive also heard rumors that ALEKS catches on and makes the tests harder.


Also, any tips for working the system?

[ryoder]

I remember that "I hate you ALEKs thread"

[usw11d3]

I did! I started very low and eventually made it to 70%. It seemed like every two steps forward I would set myself back one during an assessment. My highest math course was a very long time ago and was pre-algebra. I just thought I would throw myself into Pre-Calculus and bit the bullet.
What eventually helped me with Alex was a notebook. I would write down the name of the problem in the pie chart and then write down the information given about each problem and I kept all of the problem examples. I could refer to these when I was in an assessment. It helped me keep track of what to do for each type of problem. The more exact I kept my notebook the better I would do on the assessments. That's when I really started to make progress. Also, I only planned to make it to 70%. Keeping that in mind, if there was a problem that seemed complicated, I skipped it and went to problems that I could learn. I also used mathway.com to help me learn the formulas. I ended up finishing in about 6 weeks. It seemed like forever and then it just popped! You can do it, don't give up! It is way better than paying for a college course or trying to remember everything for a test! Good Luck Sweetie!

[jmichelle79]

What eventually helped me with Alex was a notebook. I would write down the name of the problem in the pie chart and then write down the information given about each problem and I kept all of the problem examples. I could refer to these when I was in an assessment.

This is what I have been doing. I finally made it to 67% . I have been working on this for about 1 month. Notes are key!! Even with the notes It can be a challange to keep everything organized in a way that during assessment you know what you are looking for. Good Luck!

[ryoder]

Writing it down is great for memory but always print the explanations to a pdf or other electronic format and save them in subfolders based on topic with a good title. Then when you do the assessment, which is open notes, you have detailed explanations to help you through the problems.

[IrishJohn]

That's what I did and ended up with over 300 pages for each course! Here's a tip: check with your local library. Mine doesn't charge for printouts so I saved a lot of money in toner and paper!

[bricabrac]

That's what I did and ended up with over 300 pages for each course! Here's a tip: check with your local library. Mine doesn't charge for printouts so I saved a lot of money in toner and paper!

print electronic pages. If you have windows OS installed you should be able to print to microsoft xps document writer if you do not have full version of adobe.

Microsoft XPS Document Writer (MXDW)
Print to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer

[IrishJohn]

print electronic pages. If you have windows OS installed you should be able to print to microsoft xps document writer if you do not have full version of adobe.

Microsoft XPS Document Writer (MXDW)
Print to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer

You can certainly do that, but for me I need to feel real pages. It helps me in studying for tough subjects. Perhaps I'm showing my age...

[dcan]

I lucked out and had a copy of Microsoft OneNote, and I always wanted an excuse to play with a pen tablet, so my wife was kind enough to get me a basic one for my birthday. That made ALEKS so much easier to deal with, because I could "print" the screens to pages in OneNote and then actually write notes directly on the pages. Pages there are infinite, so I just scrolled down or to the side to do every problem. When test time came, I had a huge notebook of tabbed pages with all of my exercises written there.

Of course, a 3-ring binder or spiral notebook is much cheaper, but my way was much cooler.

If I had to do it all over again and did not have that capability, I would do what others suggest and print to PDF or XPS files. Doing this makes them searchable, so you can search for keywords from the test questions and go directly to the PDF or XPS file that shows you how that problem is solved. Very easy. I highly recommend this approach, it will save you a lot of time flipping through 300 pages of paper!!

[af2012]

I'm tackling Aleks Intermediate Algebra right now but it's slow going. I started out at 4% on my initial test & after 8 hrs of doing exercises & screen shotting my heart out, I'm up to 11% on my last eval. From what I'm seeing on this thread Aleks College Algebra is easier than Aleks Intermediate Algebra, is that correct?

Since I only need 3 credits and it seems like the College Algebra is still accepted by TESC, do you think I should just switch to Aleks College Algebra instead?