anonymous a.

Being a hard-sciences major, I was forced to do "8" hours of ALEKS topics per week. That number is realistically around 15 hours, given that sometimes it can take a full hour to get one topic correct and I was usually assigned 10-16 topics per week, in addition to my other 4-credit classes. The worst part about ALEKS is if you are off by a thousandth of a decimal place or anything similar, it will take away one of 5 of your progress bars for each topic. Oh but if you get two problems correct in a row, you get a double bar filled, so 2 for 1! But if you mess up the third time, it just takes away what you've spent more than 30+ minutes to gain. What is the point of giving me question after question on a topic that you can't even explain if I press the "Explanation" button? I worked so damn hard to get one stupid progress bar, and then it brings me all the way down or even locks me out after a certain number of attempts. My grade right now is at a D, thanks to ALEKS, considering my Gen Chem professor bases 50% of our grade on ALEKS alone. $#*! you, ALEKS. And don't even get me mentioned on Objective Knowledge Checks. These "checks" take 2 hours to complete, and even if you're damn sure you got 90% of the questions right, it brings your pie progress down 10-15% and now you have to redo 40+ topics just to catch up again. This is so detrimental to both my GPA and my self-esteem, as I know these concepts are easier to understand and way less frustrating and complicated than ALEKS makes them out to be. But I need to get them done in order to barely pass the class, and I'm only a freshman. $#*! you ALEKS.