Price: 19.95 per month per student BUT they do have family discounts !
Format: Online
I’ll admit it I am a turkey! I like flashy programs. I crave interesting pictures on the workbooks I buy. I have a weakness for flashy. ALEKS isn’t flashy…but who needs to be when you do the job so well.
ALEKS has math courses from K-12. In the high school levels there is a plethora of courses such as chemistry and business math courses. The program is simple and straight forward. You sign your child up for a class (they give recommendations and will allow adjusting if you accidentally pick wrong). Then your child takes an assessment test. From there you work off a pie chart learning all the sections needed to understand the class you have picked. Such as my daughter loved working with whole numbers so she was able to do all those within the first week. She still needed to work with percentages and geometry. By the time she has finished this course she will know everything for a 7th grader in a compressed amount of time.
How can they do this so quickly? Simple if your child knows it already then prove it! They do the problems and get them right then they can move on. If your child needs an explanation they get it with practice problems to solidify the learning. This cuts out tons of busy work and lets a child that is a quick learner fly through the material.
ALEKS is a Research-Based Online Math Program:
- Complete Curriculum Solution for Math with Access to Full Course Library
- No Textbook Required
- Artificial Intelligence Targets Gaps in Student Knowledge
- Assessment and Individualized Learning for Grades 3-12
- Master Account – Monitor and Direct Learning Progress
- Unlimited Online Access – PC & Mac Compatible
I started by signing up my daughter. I needed to use Microsoft not my normal Foxfire. It took a day to get her all signed up and get the return emails needed. When it was done she had a password and name to enter ALEKS. I also had one to watch over her progress including time worked. 
We didn’t start off with a bang. The initial assessment test took my daughter 3 hours! Why? Turns out my lovely daughter got the family curse of perfectionism. She had a hard time moving on if she didn’t understand everything about the problem and wanted to verify it was right before moving on. Frankly it was a painful experience but an eye opener.
The next day she was a bit gun shy about going back on for her math time. I sat with her and helped her through the review problems that start everyday. We were given a neat easy to read pie graph showing what she had already mastered and what she needed help in. This pie graph is what changed the whole thing around for us. The immediate feedback of accomplishment and a visual representation of her strengthens helped her.
As the days went by I needed to help her less as she learned there was an ‘explain’ function for when she needed some extra help. The one problem we had throughout is the learning is all reading based. Like I said there is nothing flashy, it is sleek and clear. In the end it proved to be a winner, my daughter liked the simple ‘just math’ format.
I would recommend this program for a great online math program. My daughter really liked the immediate feedback and the visual graph of where she stood overall. This program will be particularly good for gifted learners that fly through material. You are paying for the month not the course! The assessment test will also let you know immediately if the program you picked is too low so there will be no time lost on work your child already knows.
I hope you enjoy! Have any of you tried ALEKS? What did you think? Here are some fellow bloggers thoughts on ALEKS.
Honesty Note: I received a free month through the TOS crew team to review and give my honest opinion.
