Mc graw hillReviews 1,892

This is the worst program EVER! I'm in college and I used this program 3 times throughout my college semesters, I hate it so much the smallest error you make they take off points from your progress. A lot of college kids say how much they hate Aleks and still the school will continue to use it. I believe it is a money scam to make you have to rebuy after ever semester, WORST PROGRAM EVER I RATHER GO BACK TO USING PENCIL AND PAPER

---TL; DR at the bottom ---

Ok, so I am a first-year college student. The college that I am attending recently (like in the last 3 years) added ALEKS to the curriculum. I am enrolled in a basic college algebra 1 course at this university and boy is it something else... the issues that I have with this are not just ALEKS's fault either. My college has a role to play in this as well.

To start, ALEKS is a completely online course. This is an issue for someone like myself who learns infinitely better if there is an actual teacher lecturing. My university has it all online and there is a lady that is "in charge of the class" and is "the teacher" but she just walks around the room as we try to grind away on the topic goals.

The second issue is the topic goals. So, my university took this algebra course (which is supposed to be a year-long course by the way) and turned it into one semester. This means that most weeks we have a topic goal of 45 hours. That means that you should end up spending around 10 hours inside and outside of class working on these topics to hit your goal. My university also has deadlines for tests and stuff like that but it's a "self-paced course" it is not at all because how can I be behind if I'm going at my pace? It's just completely worthless.

I am currently a whole chapter behind and keep failing the tests because I missed a topic goal by about 5 topics. That's how easy it is to fall behind. It is a terrible program.

Good idea for an online math class but at the college level? No. It simply doesn't work because this is super complex stuff that can't be helped to be put into a computer program that doesn't fully explain every scenario or problem type.

TL; DR - Try fitting 407 college-level math topics into 3 months with minimal explanations :)

ALEKS is frustrating. It is slow. It is unfair. It can't explain anything comprehensively. For starters, the program locks you out of completing your homework and forces you to do review occasionally. Isn't that my prerogative as a student? Additionally, the software punishes you for answering questions incorrectly however minor the mistake. Sometimes it will even give you a more challenging question than the last for not understanding the prior question. How the f**k does that help in any way? The explanations are terrible and there's next to no help around the internet unless you want to poor money into the pockets of the greasy incompetent pigs at Chegg. Whoever made ALEKS is not doing anyone a favor for their education. Pearson's software is eons better. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that I vehemently hate ALEKS. F**k everything it stands for (: Can't believe I paid money for this POS

I am in a college course and we use this program and it has complicated everything. The course I am in is a lecture that uses the ALEKS book as the course material, which is not what it is mean for. The system uses 'Knowledge Checks' to occasionally assess where you are in your progress, however they are overly time consuming and do not benefit the student by any means. They have no impact on grades and only serve as a roadblock to completing homework on time. You cannot access the book while the Knowledge Check is active, which serves as a massive problem when needing to access the book while in class. The book itself is also painful to read and has frequent mathematical errors. The writing style is that of a middle aged, out of the loop person who is trying to be 'cool' and 'hip with the young kids'. If you are home schooled, this could potentially be a system that works, however do not expect to genuinely learn anything from this.

The topics are introduced with a very basic first lesson and then immediately jumps into something that is only partially related and much more complicated without much explanation to help you learn how to properly complete the questions that are asked. If you need to review how to do a problem, which you cannot do for most of the problems, you have to sacrifice one of your progression bars in attempt to understand the poorly written explanations. There is only one explanation for ALEKS and if you don't understand it, oh well. Time to start googling on a better way to do it.

I can confidently say that I will never recommend this program to anyone for any subject. It is inefficient, useless, and miserable to try to learn from and teach from. Not worth spending $60 for the online code ONLY.

Okay, so. As a student who has been using ALEKS for around 2 years now, I've heard many bad things about it from my peers. Just happy to know it's not only me.

'ALEKS is life-changing'. That phrase is one I've seen on the cover of the website. And I have to agree... just not in the way they said. ALEKS is a no-good piece of poop. It doesn't help our learning (all we have to do is solve 2 problems to "learn" a topic), and it makes a lot of people stressed out. Everyone in my school has to use it and I'm assuming many of the students agree.

Me and my friends have for the past year and a half, conducted a project dedicated to finding all of ALEKS weak spots. We have also found reasons it's out to kill us...

Don't use ALEKS. It's bad for you.

I'd rather get butt raped by Bill Cosby than use this program. Jean-Claude Falmagne can be molested by the Jolly Green Giant. This program has a design that causes stage 4 brain cancer. This program makes IXL look like a Holy Jesus. I would rather use a pine cone as a butt plug than do ALEKS. If have to do one more topic I'm gonna shoot up an orphanage in a 3rd world country. ALEKS is the reason Roger William killed himself. ALEKS makes the Holocaust look like an American mary-go round. But in summary, I strongly dislike this program. If something were to be change, I would highly suggest a different arrangement of the controls. Check and Explanation are too close together. Thank you for your time.