welcome to the ALEKS student experience
review my name is Andrea Hendricks from
Georgia State University perimeter
college we have used ALEKS for almost
five years at my institution and a
variety of implementations while you
work through this review you'll be
exposed to both the student side and
instructor side of ALEKS so that you can
envision what it would be like if you
were to use ALEKS with your students in
either a face-to-face environment or
another format I will be your instructor
and I look forward to you being my
students I first wanted to share how I
talk about ALEKS with every new group of
students to set expectations and help
them understand how ALEKS works ALEKS
stands for assessment and learning and
knowledge spaces it is very different
from traditional online homework
platforms and that ALEKS creates a
personalized experience to help students
succeed ALEKS is designed to measure
prerequisite knowledge and to ensure
that you have the necessary foundational
knowledge to be successful in mastering
new material math topics build on top of
each other and we want to ensure our
students have a strong foundation
without those gaps that they often come
in with so that they can be prepared to
succeed in not only this course been in
future courses students are all at
different places yet ALEKS helps them all
reach common goals ALEKS enables us to
know our students better and to further
guide them to success ALEKS is very
flexible and can be implemented in a
variety of course formats but we wanted
to highlight how ALEKS can be used in a
traditional face-to-face format as many
of you teach in this format frequently
so in our mock face-to-face class let's
assume that we meet on Tuesdays and
Thursdays
lecture on Tuesdays I will introduce new
concepts and present a lecture then
before the next class students will work
through ALEKS topics that have been
assigned based on the classes results I
will use a variety of reports to help
guide our lecture and class time on
Thursday to help illustrate I am going
to share a few videos throughout our two
weeks that will help you see what I see
as an instructor and how your work will
guide me I will work to share how I
connect ALEKS work into the classroom but
first things first to help ALEKS get to
know you students work through an
adaptive diagnostic assessment called
the initial knowledge check this is
completed after a tools tutorial and
brief ALEKS walk through the purpose of
the initial knowledge check is to give
students credit for any course content
they already know this credit is
different for each student because each
student has a unique math background
their math classes they've taken time
since your last math class grades earned
in those courses and so on there is no
right or wrong grade on the initial
knowledge check and I guide students
that it's important to be honest with
their answers some students come in
knowing about ten percent of the course
content some more comprehending more or
less than ten percent of the content is
perfectly acceptable students are in our
course to learn the material not to show
us that they already know it it is
certainly ok to click on I don't know
the result of the knowledge check is not
a typical test grade but rather a
measure of what you know and don't know
the initial knowledge check will be
around 30 questions and takes roughly an
hour depending on the course content as
you answer questions ALEKS is adapting
narrowing in on what you know and what
you don't know based on years and years
of analyzing student results and their
clear understanding of how topics are
connected and built upon one another in
a typical class I found that about ten
percent of the students come in knowing
less than ten percent of the material
the majority of my students come in
knowing around eleven to twenty percent
another significant number come in
knowing 21 to 30 percent and then the
remaining portion of students know
thirty-one percent or higher if you find
students come in knowing seventy percent
or some really large amount of the
content that triggers an alert to you
that maybe there is a placement issue
with this particular student maybe they
didn't prepare well or they were not
feeling well whatever the case but the
great advantage for ALEKS is that you can
identify those students on the very
first day of the semester and intervene
and perhaps get them in the appropriate
course so that they can be where they
will on be most successful the result of
your initial knowledge check is an
individualized learning path that will
guide you through the content of this
course ALEKS determines what topics you
are ready to learn meaning you've met
the prerequisite skills to be successful
with the new topics so for this
experience we've made some smaller
assignments for you to work through as
an instructor I can control the pace and
sequence for how students work through
our course I've set up our deadlines for
mondays and wednesday nights so that we
can work to accomplish a specific set of
objectives by a certain date in ALEKS a
group of topics is called an
intermediate objective and then as the
instructor I can lecture and help
students where they need it the most I
can go deeper on some topics we can work
in groups and do other types of
activities in the course
in my course set up I set my deadlines
to drive the pace and allow us to be
working together but still at individual
paces then I built a homework grade to
capture how students are meeting those
deadlines for instance if a particular
objective has 20 topics and a student
has completed 18 of those topics by the
deadline their homework grade for that
objective is a ninety percent over the
term students are working to fill in
their pie all within pace of our class
meeting my deadlines along the way for
this particular course I set up
objectives based on sections that
correspond to the textbook one thing
about ALEKS is that as the student works
for an objective and if they finish the
objective before the deadline the next
objective will open permitting the
student to go on if an objective
deadline comes about and a student has
not completed all the topics in that
objective the next objective still opens
however ALEKS will still hold this
student accountable for knowing any
prerequisite content if there were
skills in a previous section that aren't
necessary to perform a skill in a
following section then that student will
still be required to complete that
prerequisite skills so we would first
like you to experience this initial
knowledge check and this is very
important please work through this as an
average student do not get everything
correct can answer some correct some
wrong click I don't know for some think
of what your typical students come into
your course having an understanding of
we will be referencing your student data
and reports if you treat your experience
as a normal student this experience will
be a lot more valuable for you once you
work through this initial knowledge
check you can continue to work in your
ALEKS path
to complete our first intermediate
objective or small assignment and ALEKS
will guide you to do so I will be
sharing another video with a class
report on how I use that initial
knowledge check to drive my instruction
enjoy and I look forward to working with
you