ALEKS - yay or nay as a stand-alone?

[StaceyinLA]

Just wondering.

 

If not, why not? What is it lacking?

[jibaker103]

My ds loves Khan Academy a lot more than ALEKS because it has a more user friendly interface and teaches in a clearer and detailed way. I love Khan because my son is a lot happier completing Algebra, it is free, and it is tied to CK12 math curriculum!

[Elizabeth in WA]

My ds loves Khan Academy a lot more than ALEKS because it has a more user friendly interface and teaches in a clearer and detailed way. I love Khan because my son is a lot happier completing Algebra, it is free, and it is tied to CK12 math curriculum!

 

ALEKS is, in my experience, more complete than Khan Academy in terms of topic coverage. However, Khan Academy videos are great instruction and we use them, along with the practice problems a lot. Whether you can use ALEKS as a stand alone depends on at least two major things: 1) How comfortable you are providing on the fly explanations when your child needs more help the the Explain button provides and 2) how much review your child needs.

 

Even having it reassess at least every two weeks, one of my children needed more practice to retain concepts. Two did great with it, and my youngest eventually reached a level where she needed more practice but went through 2.5 grade levels and the quick tables before reaching that point. I am moving away from ALEKS this year for all of them because oldest is nearly at the end of the available curriculum in math anyway (and I think more practice with pre-calc topics is needed) and thought the Chemistry course would be good for review but not for learning, the next is the one needing more practice, and I think the younger two have reached a point where slower and more practice will benefit them. They are free to use Khan Academy to continue accelerating if they desire to do so, but their assigned work for the next year is focused on speed and fluency - consolidating essentially - and slower progress to keep in interest in the process.

[Jane Elliot]

Just wondering.

 

If not, why not? What is it lacking?

 

We used it as a stand alone for our twins' geometry course. Total disaster. I will never use ALEKS as a stand alone high school course again. This was 5 or 6 years ago, so I don't remember all the details, and maybe ALEKS has changed. From what I remember, there just was not enough instruction. During the course it seemed like they were doing fine (I mean the reports from ALEKS made it look like they were right on track), but at the end of the year when we evaluated, they didn't know a lot of things they should have known from a standard geometry course. They didn't understand key concepts, and they weren't ready to move on. They ended up repeating geometry with another text and it set them back.

 

Using ALEKS as a stand alone is very high on my list of things I wish I had done differently in my homeschool.

Edited July 8, 2011 by Luann in ID

[WishboneDawn]

I would think just the fact that it's all on a keyboard would exclude it from being a stand-alone thing for me. We tried it and loved it as a supplement a couple of years back but I really think a kid needs to grab a pencil and struggle with a page full of questions.

[EKS]

A big nay! I've personally used their Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II courses. They are made for people who just need to be reminded about how to do math (and they're very up front about this, or at least they used to be). Not good for the first time around.