Mc graw hillReviews 1,892

ALEKS sucks. It emphasizes procedural learning over conceptual learning. You retain NOTHING. The lessons jump around between different subject matters... you don't build off of one concept. You'll be doing order of operations with signed fractions then the next topic will be finding the area of a trapezoid with an unknown height. It's ridiculous. You constantly shift gears. On top of that they don't fully develop the topic you're on. You learn off of one example problem and and then answer 2-3 on your own problems, but they'll throw tricks at you (signs, reverse the ordering, exceptions to the rule, etc.) but they never covered what you should do in those instances; I guess I should just know through osmosis?

My high school teachers were so good at teaching math, presented it in logical order, if there were exceptions or occasional reasons to stray from normal procedure, it branched off somehow, they let you know! They made it into a flow chart of sorts. "If A do B, but if B do C, if it's neither A or B ten just solve the problem as normal". They built the foundation from the ground up. Not inserting new branches randomly when you're halfway up the tree.

Also their practice tests and homework involving any geometry are missing the visuals. And no it's not a geometry word problem! It will literally say find the area for this triangle and there's no bleeping drawing of a triangle OR base, lengths, heigths given! Just an blank space. So you can't even practice.

This should be as a supplemental tool to a real teacher who understands how to create efficient/logical lesson plans and is actively engaged with students and can see/understand not just who is struggling, but why they are struggling! Isn't that why every math teacher I've ever had said to show your work? So they can see how and why you're messing up and teach to/help with that specific issue? A computer doesn't know why you're getting it wrong, they can't see your work, it just keeps presenting the problem until you get a couple right in a row and then says "yep you go it, let's test you on it after we expose you to 30 more unrelated topics".

If you're using this a teaching replacement you're doing a disservice to yoir students.

Aleks has an amazing reward system built into, and i couldn't stop working on the assignments (literally!). Basically how it works is if you get a question right then you're overjoyed to find that the system doesn't believe your right and you get to go back and do the question all over again! But my fav part is if you answer so many questions wrong at one time, then the system blocks you out completely allowing you to go jump off a bridge, hang yourself, or get creative with any power tools in reach. I f*****g love this program!

This is by far the WORST teaching/learning tool I have ever used. I had to complete an over the summer review chem assignment, and I hadn't taken chem in over 2 years, so I needed a refresher on a lot of the content. When you need help with a problem, the explanation does little to no help whatsoever. It's an excessively long explanation that is confusing and does not make much sense. Answers are very finicky to type in, and one time the program wouldn't let me advice as it claimed I had used a letter that the system didn't recognize... the letter I had used was an "s". Stay away at all costs, I would not recommend this software to ANYBODY.

This website has literally brought me to tears and just wanting punch anything and everything around me. I will be stuck on one the for hours because it doesn't tell me what I did wrong. But on some of them I will put in a answer and it will tell me it is wrong and so I get rid of the negative or add one and it says it's wrong again and says the correct answer was exactly the first one I had. And when I took the test I had to redo most of my units because it took away what I learned this is the worst program ever I don't know why they make us use this.

This is less than garbage. At least manure fertilizes the soil. There is no help desk. The messages you can send always notify teacher which in my case is foreign and sounds like she is speaking some slang African dialect. It did not work when i had plenty of time for the due date of an assigntment for i don't know what reason. Prepare for this piece of work if you are unfortunate enough to use it. U would put 0 for rating but it does not allow it

My school decided to give a certain group of advanced kids, including myself, this program to do 8th grade math over the summer so we can take pre-algebra in 8th grade and I hate. Some of my closest friends are in this group with me and are having an awful experience as well as myself. Personally it does not explain each topic in detail and it doesn't adjust to your ability/pace which I disliked as well. It just does not work for me.

THE ALEKS EXPERIENCE:

Learn a variety of 100 amazing math problems that you never knew existed
Go to the timed quiz because your confident that you know how to do all 100 lessons
Click on the timed quiz
Questions 1-10 are
Proofs
Proofs
Proofs
Proofs
Proofs
Proofs
Even More Proofs
Proofs that prove why this course is bad
Proofs that prove why the above proof is proven correct

If this wasn't enough for you to see why ALEKS is a bad program, then let my boy SpongeBob tell you why.

Cast:
SpongeBob - ALEKS student
Mr. Krabs - ALEKS timed test

"But Mr. Krabs, I'm only doing what you SAID!"
"Then you'll say we're not talking about this! (points to how to translate a shape)"
"Or this! (points to how to find the volume of a cube)"
"We're talking about THIS! (points to how to solve polynomials, string theory, cryptography, logarithms, and the unit circle)

-9,000,000/10 would commit seppuku with a ruler, slit my wrists with protractors, and put a compass in both my eyes than do ALEKS math

Also, I have to do 400 something lessons in a month, which is apparently equivalent to a whole YEAR in math class. Imagine going to your school everyday except theres 8 periods and all periods are MATH.

I also listened to some music while doing ALEKS. That was a bad move, because now every time I hear that same music all it just does is invoke the mental image of ALEKS in my MIND

Also almost cried

I might have gave it a better review if I had gotten it at the beginning of summer. First of all it has 399 sections, not problems but sections. And it makes you take progess check and retake sections if you miss the one question they give you or forget what your doing since it might have been two weeks since doing it. Also it gives horrible explanations, I had to watch YouTube videos and google how to do stuff because the description was so bad. Also it has a due date, which wouldn't have been too bad but when you get it a month and a half before the due date, you kind of have to rush. Not to mention if you happen to have two weeks of camp that is part of your school and you won't have time to work on it at all. So yes, the real thing is why are teachers still using this?!

I really don't understand the point of these vocabulary quizzes and timed quizzes if in the first place you don't know what to do on them. Maybe it's just me, but I did not learn about matrices at all but that was all that was on my quizzes (both timed and vocabulary). This program is unorganized because you never actually know what you're learning. You just go through the topics in, what seems like, no particular order. I think the best way for learning an entire subject in two months is to probably actually plan the units (i. E. Unit 1 "Titled," Unit 2 "Titled," etc.) not just 3+ questions of one topic and then moving on to another concept. This is worse than common core. Also the way students are expected to "learn" all this information is based off of ONE example, that may not even apply to all of the questions. Examples are very helpful, but when it comes down to it, how am I supposed to actually retain all that information thrown at me. ALEKS demands several topics done within the span of a week, in addition to a project, times quizzes, and vocabulary quizzes. If any of those listed before were actually organized and helpful to this whole learning concept, then I wouldn't be complaining, however, it's not. ALEKS is the worst possible program used for learning and is incapable of teaching students who are relying on this class to restore their credits, or students who simply would like to work hard to get ahead.

This program uses calculator logic when doing math. Meaning it wont put parenthesis in the original problem but will use them when solving. More often than not causing you to get the wrong answer. It isn't even consistant with its problem solving either. The test itself is wildly inaccurate because it will only give you one of each type of problem. So if you get that one problem wrong due to not being able to check your work on a calculator it tanks your score. It is ruining my college career before it even starts. If you want better review use khan academy or any other reasourse that include video explinations.

The Math review is horrible, I GOT 4 POINTS LESS ON THE PLACEMENT, You see I did an 8 hour class Algebra 1 and 2 and alek shows that I did WORSE on the placement test than better, The problem is not stress because I know all of you are going to jump to conclusions.
Another failure of this program is that it doesn't help you at all with Trial and Error when you are taking the placement tests, It doesn't show you the ones that you got wrong it just shows you a bunch of pie charts. It says on the pie charts I did better but up above it says I did worse... Wtf? Another failure that this program uses is that you can not go back and correct answers that you think you got wrong "It's interactive" Shut the hell up. So when you submit an answer it is final you cannot go back and correct it.
Calculator on here is complete trash, When you need it the most, it is not there when you need it. Sometimes when you are calculating tax you have to be a math god to figure out how to do it.