ALEKS

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 ALEKS 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 is literally the worst math related website I've ever seen.

At my school ALEKS expect us to the 15 topics every week, well that's quite easy, except for the knowledge checks which are literally pointless, by the time I finish doing my knowledge check I could have finished about 30 mindless topics, but then they give us a detention for not finishing our 15 topics.

Another annoyance I have with Aleks is you don't actually learn anything, all you do is work mindlessly to get these stupid topics, and if we don't, we get a detention. Ironically for our detention they make us stay a hour after school doing more Aleks. Aleks doesn't actually teach anyone anything, all it does is make us do the same problems over and over and over again, and when you find a problem you can't solve it doesn't teach you how to solve the problem, so you press EXPLANATION, and then it tells you how to solve that particular problem, so you are like well if I just copy the steps they did, BUT NO, the next question is a completely different scenario
So you have to press EXPLANATION like 5 times before you can actually solve every problem, and after all that you finally get your topic.

I read on someone else's review that their professor stopped teaching math and just made everyone do Aleks, I have the exact same experience, I am 13 years old in 7th grade and my math teacher makes us do Aleks all the time, but when we actually have class work and we finish early she doesn't let us do Aleks, saying its 'Homework that we should do at home,' which is honestly funny seeing that we have a class literally made just for Aleks, we spend 45 minutes trying to get some topics.

Our school is a expeditionary school so we have tons of work to do preparing for our culminating event which we spend half of the school year preparing for, so in Math our teacher has us doing stupid projects, for example, one expedition we were doing was using biomimicry to make a new and inspiring shoe, so in math our teacher made us draw things to scale, which I found was pointless, but when we didn't have to do any scale drawings she would make us do Aleks, instead of actually doing work.

Overall I think the mixture of Aleks and our incompitent teacher has made me dumber.

Undergrad Chem student here. ALEKS could be great, but there are several things that make it miserable:

1. If your answer isn't EXACTLY correct with the correct amount of significant digits, you're marked wrong. Some of the problems require 10+ different steps to go through - imagine spending 15 minutes working through a massive problem, and then being marked wrong for putting down 16.6 instead of 17.

2. You need to get 2-3 questions correct in a row to complete a topic. If you are one question away from completion and get the next question wrong, you are moved backwards and now have to get 2 in a row correct. If you miss the next one, you are now back to square one and need 3 in a row. What this means is that it is very, very possible for you to be stuck in an endless loop of getting a correct answer, and then getting a wrong answer and being pushed backwards. Which is made even worse by my 3rd point...

3. Most of the time, the "explanations" ALEKS gives are incredibly confusing and complicated. If you can't find someone on youtube who explains a particular topic, you're gonna have a bad time.

Finally, let's imagine a scenario involving everything listed above. You're trapped in an endless cycle of spending HOURS performing calculations, getting a question right, then getting the next one wrong, etc. You spend 20 minutes trying to barely understand the explanation... finally, when you're absolutely exhausted working the same types of incredibly tedious problems, you have one left... you spend another 15 minutes calculating everything, you press "check" and... NOPE. You put down 173.84 instead of 173.8. You're stuck in the cycle.

This leaves people discouraged, unmotivated, and exhausted, while learning very little. It needs to be less punishing, more motivating, and less confusing in its explanations. Without these changes, it will continue to be a painful, disheartening experience for students.

Before I go off on why this program is ineffective, frustrating, tedious, and just plain awful, let me give a little bit of background on my experience with mathematics.
As far back as I can remember, I never understood or enjoyed arithmetic; I was (and still am) intrigued by the arts, not the numbers. I liked writing, illustrating, music, and cinema. When I started learning math in school, the left hemisphere of my brain wouldn't cooperate with me: I did not comprehend, and therefore despised math. Math majors may be reading this and thinking "you're just lazy... you can't think practically or logically... why can't you just get off your high-horse and learn your math?" In retrospect, I didn't actually hate math, I hated the way it was taught. I -- along with a myriad of others -- was taught a small-minded, cookie-cutter approach to mathematics. I tried to "learn the math" and it was far beyond me at the time (I apologize that my brain wasn't fully developed yet). A few summers ago, after enough maturing (and, of course, watching "Good Will Hunting" for the first time) I was able to realize that arithmetic can actually be interesting, useful, and (dare I say) fun!
Going into university, I knew I would have to take at least a couple (and thank goodness, only a couple) math courses. I had the idea that, with my new way of thinking and a higher education, I would learn math in an entirely new, more effective, and interesting method. It was new, alright, but it was ANYTHING BUT the latter two! Like any student at the beginning of the semester, I buy all of my "books." I dreaded textbooks, so I was a tad relieved when all I saw for Math 100P was a slip and code for a computer program. My first few days of using ALEKS, I saw nothing significantly wrong with it: it was customized to your level of knowldge and (so I thought) enforced muscle-memory -- which, being a musician, I know is critical to learning. After roughly the first two weeks, I come to realize how foolish I was for having those thoughts: the program started marking me wrong for small, trivial mistakes; sending me back in progress for said wrong answers; poorly explaining concepts; rushing me to complete complex equations I'd never seen a day in my life; wasting my paper (ah, the irony); sending me further back after bogus "knowledge checks"; having fits of anger; making me cry crocodile tears in the middle of class; and having nervous breakdowns whenever I would see or picture the ALEKS logo. It goes without saying, but rather than giving me an appreciation of the intricacies and abstraction of mathematics, it made me detest the subject more than ever. I am disgusted and left with a horrible first impression of college math. I shake my head at the fact that THIS will be a core memory of my first semester at university!
Thankfully, the backlash at Southern Connecticut State University was strong enough, and the program will be out by next semester. On the other hand, a good friend of mine at Howard University will be forced to use this program just like I and many other unfortunate students were. I'm assuming other colleges and universities will be using this program in the future, so I say this to any professor or head of department reading this: do NOT use ALEKS for anything! It is a waste of money, waste of learning, waste of paper, and waste of time. It will (trust me, I'm not exaggerating) give your students migraines, sleepless nights, heartache, and nightmares.

Sorry ALEKS, your methods of teaching are incorrect. Try again!

ALEKS is the WORST education website EVER! SERIOUSLY! I can see why it has so many negative reviews! This website forces students to answer questions that are always above their level. If ALEKS get the question wrong the first two times, ALEKS makes the student feel like a pile of dog $#*! by moving on to another question. IT DOESN'T EVEN EXPLAIN IT. Speaking of how they explain questions (which ALEKS rarely does), the explanations are just soooo bad! It seems they got someone who went through 27 years of college and solves questions in a calculus book for a living to write the explanations. They then feel the need to use graphs and charts WAY above a students standard, not to mention that the number lines look like a $#*!ing 3 and a half year old drew them. Just numbers and lines EVERYWHERE. It doesn't even look like a number line. Next, the calculator is just USELESS. The only times they let the student use the calculator, is for questions like "12 x 3". I always split screen and use Mathway.com because not only does the calculator only appear for simple questions, the calculator is SO SIMPLE. Like, the only buttons are 1-9,0, decimal, add, subtract, multiply, divide, and equals! I literally have to do five topics of this bull$#*! EVERY WEEK! And, not only is that bad enough, but as I mentioned earlier, the topics are way too hard, so I end up spending 2 hours on it! Whoever thought to themselves, "Hey, lets put over 1 Million kids at schools in pure misery by making them do some stupid math problems that they can't understand!" I have literally seen kids asking other kids for answers, and kids even ask the math teacher, and sometimes, not even the teacher understands some problems. I don't understand who thought this was a good idea. Everybody already knows math is the most hated subject of all time, so, why not make a stupid $#*!ing website all about hard-ass math problems for kids who are in as low as the 3rd grade? ALEKS is so $#*!ing terrible. Seeing as it has over 440 1 star reviews, you'd think such a bull$#*! company would close, but no. I'm generally hoping teachers can see this, and see through this websites bs. Not to mention how $#*!ING SLOW ALEKS IS! My school has Windows 10 laptops in the library and Chromebook carts. I understand Chromebooks aren't the best laptop ever, but it shouldn't take 5 minutes for a goddamn question to load. This also occurs on the Windows laptops. ALEKS is generally a $#*!ty company, who live off of children's misery. Overall, ALEKS sucks ass and wouldn't recommend to anybody, whether it be a 12-year-old or a 38-year-old college graduate. Just terrible all around, and I hope to see it disappear next school year.

Anybody who uses ALEKS as a means of getting somebody beneath them, say a child or student, to do math will likely tell you that this program is heaven sent. They'll sing it's praises all day, and to be honest, ALEKS aren't entirely misguided in saying that. At it's core, the idea behind ALEKS is that it's a fantastic automated review tool for those who want the extra study practice. That's all ALEKS is really intended to be, from the looks of it. From what I know, ALEKS does that rather well. The problem lies within the students and kids that actually have to use the thing, and that's where ALEKS looses anything it may have had going for it.

As somebody who has logged in over 6 consecutive hours on this program, I can safely say that the problem with ALEKS isn't how it's designed, it's how our proffessors and teachers are using it. I'm a college student right now, but my major is foreign language, an Asian language at that, so this isn't going to be typed perfectly and there are going to be mistakes in grammer and spelling. I'm sorry. But deal with it because I believe what I have to say about this is important. Teachers: if you're going to use this program, I'm not going to stop you. If anybody tries to tell you it won't help improve math skills they either cheated or they were in one of the situations I'm currently in. To the students real quick: Math is a general education course. That means you're going to have to take it if you haven't already and you want any sort of college education despite what you may think. It doesn't matter what subject you want to go into, and nobody is going to let you get away with not taking it in college. You may not have to take a lot of math, but you'll need to take some, like it or not. I hate math. I always have. I'm also exceptionally good at avoiding things that I don't want to do that people tell me I have to do. So please believe me when I say that if you could avoid it, I wouldn't be typing this right now. However, seeing as this war between student and teacher over a stupid math review program has inspired me to share my opinion on the subject in hopes of helping the teachers of the world understand why students hate this so much. So teachers, now that I have your attention again, let's make something very clear.

Should you use ALEKS with your kids/students? Probably, yeah. It's not poorly designed and it does have some things and methods of teaching that it does incredibly well. However, you should keep the following in mind.

ALEKS is a review tool, and it should be used only as such. DO NOT use ALEKS as the primary syllabus or as the bulk of the students' experience in your class. In short, if you expect your students to do more than 4-6 hours of ALEKS a week, you're going to get students who cheat the system, despise your class, grow to dislike the program itself, and who fail. Yes, fail. If it isn't your class, it's one of the others. That's because the amount of time a student spends on homework a day is not going to be the majority of the student's day. They aren't going to give schoolwork any more than 1-3 hours per day, because in order to balance out daily life alongside the amount of time they spend at school, they're going to be doing other things. Asking them to do otherwise is only going to lead to students who don't believe you care about them or their well being, and in turn will shy away from coming to you if they require assistance, which isn't what you want. In college, students understand that they need to devote more time to schoolwork, but they also spend less time physically in class on average, and are more mature. In addition, those hours devoted to homework are usually devoted to all of the classes they have, not just yours. That means if all of their time is spent in ALEKS, a program which directly requires certain regulated amounts of time spent working in the program, they aren't going to do anything for any other classes, and they are going to fail as a result. I'm not saying that all students do this, just most of them. Thing is though, the prodigy is going to spend more time in ALEKS regardless, and not everyone is going to enjoy working on the program. Out of respect for the people in your class, notice I said people not pupils because they are in fact people with lives and families outside of impressionable minds, you should make things a little less strenuous on those poor souls who would rather not be taking a math class. I understand your perspective, but to a High School kid, it might not be so apparent what it is you're trying to do to help them, so if you want to teach them math, you're going to have to also get them to put down the wall of math hatred, and that requires them to know you aren't a being of pure evil that exists solely to force them to do math on a computer for 16 hours a week.

ALEKS is not inherantly evil, neither is math itself. But delagating homework and all other schoolwork to a robot that requires more time than actual knowledge and lacks the human ability to help properly correct mistakes and award them for the time and effort they put into it simply isn't going to help anybody. If you're going to use this, do it responsibly. Thank you for your time and patience. The students of the world thank you for not using ALEKS to stress us out and instead using it to build us up.

The absolute worst program I have used in my life. I dropped my pre-calc class because of this program. I think I could have passed the class easily if it were not for this program, but in order to pass the class completing the work on the program was necessary. The smallest mistake, such as forgetting a comma will mark a question wrong and your progress will be lost. In the end your goal is to get through the program, not learn the material. I did not have the time or the patience to deal with this program. Colleges and school systems must not do much research into these programs before implementing them into their curilliculm, just reading a couple pages of reviews on this site should say everything you need to know.

Words of advice, if at all possible, take a course that does not use this program, and if you have no other choice, be prepared for quite a painful ordeal.

**Almost three years later**
I got to thinking the other day about this horrendous program, and I realized it caused more damage to my college career than I had initially realized. I changed degree programs because of this dern thing. I had to have certain math classes like pre-calc 1,2 and calc 1. None were available without having to do this program. I took the classes with in person lectures, and all of that went fine - but when it came time to go home and do the work is where things really fell off. Like I had said almost three years ago, I think I could have gotten through those classes fine if it were not for this program, but between being a full time student and working -- I did not have the time and/or patience to sit for hours on end, going through this tedious program, so concentrated on not making a mistake, such as forgetting a comma, for if you did you are back to square one. It had gotten to the point where I was not doing any of the assignments to learn, I was doing them to complete them so I could get a grade. This program hurt me so bad, and I don't mean to sound overdramatic in saying so - but I didn't get the degree I set after because of this awful program. I don't know if my college still requires it or not - I hope by now ALEKS figured out how atrocious it is. Any program that becomes more of a chore than an asset is no program that should be used.
Reading through these reviews, I notice a lot of high school students are having to use it - and I really feel sorry for them - me, being an adult and in college having as hard of a time with it as I did, I can only imagine how I would have dealt with it in high school.
So in conclusion, without sounding too dramatic, this program really threw a wrench in my life plans - and I am still so irritated at its existence - I have never ran across anything in my life so worthless, frustrating, horrendous, pointless, and time wasting as this program.

Aleks has pulled me down so many times and it's frustrating and it sucks and omg. You can't win. You're never right. Knowledge checks will be the death of you as ALEKS only ever make you redo things you spent hours on. I have 200 or so topics (each with anywhere from 2-10 questions each depending on how many mistakes you make--which will be a lot because Aleks is a picky one) to do in 3 days. I worked on Aleks for almost 5 hours today and I was only able to get 28 topics finished (i will admit i've been procrastinating but still, they make it so hard to ever catch up). I am an A student with a 4.0 GPA, that is until I started Aleks. I don't have the time to spend hours on Aleks every day. However, if i miss a single day, I am forced to spend extra hours making up for it later. It's a very flawed design and honestly I'm crying too hard right now out of frustration to even be mad and make threats. If i have 200 topics to do in 3 days, and each topic has, say, 5 questions to it (on a good day), I have around 333 questions to answer every day-- and that's not even counting the mistakes i will most definitely make (it's impossible not to make a mistake). If it usually takes me around 4 hours for 30 topics (that's if i make very few mistakes), i will have to spend around 27 hours on Aleks in just 3 days if i ever want to catch up. That is 9-ish hours per day. And that settles it. I can't get caught up. I wake up at 5 AM and leave to school at 7 AM each morning. I don't get off school until 2:40, however, i don't get home until 3:00. I got to work at 4:00, so i can only fit in an hour of Aleks, still leaving me with 8 hours left to do in a day. I get off work at 6:30 PM (not a very hard job to do haha) and go to bed anywhere from 10-11. Let's be generous to Aleks and say i go to bed at 11:00 PM. That leaves me with 4 and 1/2 hours to do more Aleks. I still have 3.5 hours of Aleks left to go. Now i can shave off another hour of my sleep and go to bed at 12:00, leaving me with only 2.5 hours of Aleks to go (not counting the thousands of knowledge checks that will throw me back), but then i'd only be getting 6 hours of sleep each night. Being a growing teenager, I kind of rely on sleep. If i don't get at the very least 8 hours, i doze off and space out during school. That would cause me to fall behind in other classes aside from just math, ultimately damaging my chances of getting A's-- that is unless i want to spend extra hours of my day catching up on other classes, but with that math, there is absolutely no possible way to fit in ANY of my other homework because i'm still negative 2.5 in just for math!. No 9TH GRADE student should have to devote their heart and soul to Aleks! It's absurd! And i'm not even taking Honors Math! But hold the phone; let's say i don't procrastinate!
My class typically has a Quarter long assignment of finishing an Aleks "pie slice". Every Quarter lasts around a month and a half, so let's say 36 days. Every Pie slice consists of about 100 topics (that solely depends on how well you do on the first ever Aleks test you take when you first start Aleks). If it takes me 4 hours to do 30 topics (which it doesn't, it takes 5 hours. But i was having a rough day today), I can get by with only having to spend 13.5 hours-ish on Aleks every Quarter. I can divide that up over a 36 day period which will average out to not even half an hour per day. However, what kid is going to want to do math on the weekends? So that leaves me with roughly 25 school days in a Quarter and, still, close to half an hour of Aleks every day. Not at all hard, really. But let's say i miss doing it just one day? That makes it an hour of Aleks on one day. And let's face it, every kid procrastinates, even A students like me. The chances that a child will spend even 5 of th 7 days doing Aleks is very low, leaving the time spent to add up. But, alas, not every child will get to the terrible, terrible, problem i'm in right now, but i still hold my point. No child has the time, paired with other homework from several other classes, to do Aleks. I didn't even add in the other homework my math class receives just as is. I put close to 2 hours of my time, daily, into just math. It kind of sucks. ANYWAYS, my point of all this is that Aleks isn't the worst program i've ever come across, if you're able to keep up with it. But i believe that the questions per topic need to be adjusted. It's just too hard to ever catch up when you trip and fall behind. Overall, i'm okay with Aleks existing--somebody might like it, i just personally don't want to ever be near it again in my life. (most of this didn't make any sense at all, sorry lmao)

First, I only put a single star because you couldn't leave it empty. I wouldn't even give this program that. My school bookstore keeps the codes locked behind the counter and it must be handed to you by a staff member. The (student) staff member that gave me mine handed me the wrong one. I failed to read the instructions on double checking before opening so that was my bad. These bad boys are not cheap for a piece of card stock with a code on it, amounting to $86 per code. ALEKS as well as my school were unwilling to offer me a refund or exchange said code for the correct one. So I needed to spend another $86 to purchase the correct one. I do not need an access code to a course I am not even taking. That was upsetting to BEGIN with. After lots of confusion and missed progress deadlines, I finally figured it out. ALEKS likes to confuse the students. It provokes them to remember formulas- but incorrectly. Take for example the midpoint of a line segment. The formula ALEKS gives is complete trash because of the variables ALEKS use to illustrate it for the student. WHY would you use the same letter variable for completely different numbers?! The same letter variable represents the same number. That is literally how I've always seen it explained. I eventually found a formula via GOOGLE that was much easier for my mind to retain, as it gives different variable representation for different numbers (which is for the most part how everything with variables has been explained to me up until ALEKS). It's a horribly designed course. The company charges way too much for access to math tutorials that are mediocre at best. But, I'm assuming the college I go to has some sort of contract with them because I don't see my school doing away with it any time soon. There is too much money in failing students versus passing ones. Because they will pay until they pass. *Protect yourselves* make sure you confirm you purchased the correct code before opening because that money is gone once it's unsealed and you will have to pay it again to receive the code you actually need. It's horrible. I hate it. But I have to pass it to earn my credits. *Shrug*

It sounds good on paper right, you take a course, take a knowledge check on what you'll learn in the course and based on what you didnt do well on, is what you have to complete at the end of the semester. Then having to do 10-20 lessons, while also learning the subject does sound like a good way to have practice with what youre learning. However, this system is horribly executed. First off, while im all for giving knowledge checks throughout the course, as it keeps what youre learning and how you're doing in check, but having them on a weekly basis on top of the 30 topics, while doing other courses and a fulltime job is stupid to say the least. If you try to ignore it or just skip the problems or fail because of 1 tiny mistake, it wipes ALL of your progress based on that ONE problem. Or if youre getting 1 section done right because you understand it, it would give you 5 problems instead of 3 for a brand spanking new section, that you might SUCK at. Then, the order in which you learn topics is stupid, why not base it on what your class is doing, or base it on what your teacher will actually be teaching you. If the answer is, "ALEKS dont have control", then thats even more $#*!ed, because you risk your class wasting time on homework they wont even learn, and their time because instead of banging our heads against our laptops trying to figure out this mind boggling section that'll be useless to us in the long run, we could be using that time in tutoring or studying for the next exam. This website needs serious revision, especially with how it punishes you for one mistake. Ive been at 48/50 topics, only to not complete it because the explanations didnt match what i was doing, only to then go into work which i was late for because of this one problem, and not make the deadline. Example, finding a percentage of an acidic solution with part of the given solution was missing and the other half was there, yet learning how to find the Interest of an item. Those 2 ways are indeed similar, yet different because interest has its own equation, and finding the percentage of an acidic solution has its own formulas, and if you want an explanation, it destroys the streak you are on, so you feel less inclined to do it, because as i said, if you're at 3/5 and getting this 1 problem will get you to the next section, and you dont understand how to do it, you run the risk of learning it, only to get a brand new type of problem. This class also expects you to use a ridiculous amount of paper, i eventually resorted to screenshotting my screen, but given this website gives you sections at random, it became a nightmare to organize the folder with the screenshots, but imagine if you wrote all of this down. How the $#*! would you organize that? Especially since the knowledge check wants you using your notes! Like i said, it sounds amazing on paper, but it is executed horribly. Do not waste your money, talk to your consular about this and try to switch teachers.

ALEKS creates a learning path based on things that you know, it does this by giving you an initial knowledge test from the content that's going to be discussed and learned in your course. If you don't know the content then it will give you problem sets so that you catch up to where you need to be, is that really a bad thing? If anything it's helpful because if you just learn the content that's required, do you really understand it?
For my specific case, during the initial knowledge test I just clicked on "Do Not Know" all the way through, for my course in calculus it left me with 150 topics to learn for 8 weeks. Since I have my finals in the last week, ALEKS wants me to complete 25 topics over 7 weeks.
The reviews about ALEKS marking correct answers wrong is false comments, them reviewers are probably just really sour about forgetting to put a negative in front of their answer or rounding the the nearest tenth or hundredth and the program marked it wrong because, well, it was wrong. And honestly, when it marks my answer wrong I look at it and think the same thing, like "Well that's what I put!" but really I see my mistake because on paper I see that I briefly forgot that it was a negative or positive answer or forgot my decimal count and by rereading the problem I see that I didn't read it completely when I should have.
Sometimes I have a hard time understanding how to get to the answer that ALEKS want, but they have an explanation tab and if you don't understand that explanation they have a second explanation available. There are definitions included for math terms and it includes related terms to them terms. There is an ebook attached to it for your weekly assignments, if you read, try to understand what you don't know then there is no problems.
If you get wrong answers, then there is a problem with the understanding of the content, that's why the program will not let you continue when you don't understand the problem sets. If it did, the program would be lying and give you a grade you do not deserve.
There is a pie involved with ALEKS, it shows you what you need to know with how many topics for the course, there is also a timeline and you can use this to plan out your learning path through the week, not selecting your path but how many problems you need to do per week.
The only reason I had thought to leave a review was because I saw all the negative reviews and was in disagreement to mostly all of them. Just sounds like they want a trophy for wrong answers rather than the right answers and I hate math and I'm terrible at it.
I had gotten F's K-10 in math, had a teacher that believed more in one on one teaching my junior and senior years, this is the first time I have gotten A's in math besides my junior and senior years.
Overall, the program is easy to use and honestly not as bad as what everyone else is saying.

Here are problems I have noticed with Aleks.

1. The terrible explanations. Some of us, are shown the circular in class, and use Aleks for homework and quizzes for 50% of the class. However Aleks many times will cover things not explained in class. Or depending on the instructor, gives an explanation that is completely different then how you used it in class.

So if it's different, the explanation will show what ALEKS did right? Actually sometimes no, most of the time in fact no. When you start going up the ranks in Aleks, it gives no option to refresh old ideas, so when you are shown "how", you just see what they did. Work is not shown. No steps. I've even seen this with new concepts and rules not yet gone over.

Not everything is described this poorly, especially not in the beginning of say, pre-algebra.

You are also given an explanation, then click start. You can NOT go back to view the explanation without eliminating the current problem you are on. And chances are, after reading the explanation the second time, and you see what you are missing, you may be greeted with a problem that is drastically different from that which was explained to you, both originally and after going for an explanation of the specific problem.

2. The order of problems.

This is also a big issue I sometimes notice, and especially notice it after taking many deep breaths, figuring out how to do it (NEXT PROBLEM!) and I realize something. How come my next topic looks like it would of explained 3 topics back? Sometimes 5 topics back? The order of topics, can be very very out of order at many times.

3. Not enough real practice (Also another consistency issue)

So for consistency, many topics build like stairs. As you climb, the skills in one you use to learn the skills for the next, applying those skills needed before. However if you are having differences with how your instructor taught you (and you understand that way) and Aleks confuses you with another way, you run into some problems.

Once you realize what is going on, and apply it the way that works for YOU (this could be Aleks way or your instructor or tutor or friend), you start getting them down.

Now say for example you get 5 or 6 wrong in a row, then get one right. Then 4 more wrong. Get 2 right, okay your looking at it, starting to get it, you get a third correct. DONE!

Now wait a minute. If I got a total of 10 wrong and 3 right, it's not a good idea to start a new topic and move on. Because you will need to really know these skills to move onto the next topics. That is of course unless your topics are drastically out of order, then you have an entire new set of issues.

With that little practice, to go on to take a quiz, especially after only having 3 correct in a row, and who knows how far this is away from the quiz (Depending on the number of topics), you would have to refer back to the homework. Which is not taking a quiz properly. You might not have actually learned it.

Aleks just adds an extra level of frustration, especially to those who are passionate about math. Not everyone is as intuitive as others. It's not a one size fits all. With the lack of consistency, and ability for added explanations its a one size fits few.

Some of the time it really forces me to use my head, but in others with all new and conflicting rules, or say I'm given 58 topics of learning fractions, due in 5 days, it can be a bit tough to retain, ESPECIALLY coupled with all of the above.

Aleks could really be improved upon if the above was helped. But all this alone won't make it great.

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I started using ALEKS since COVID 19 forced us to adopt distance learning. It truly is not exaggeration when you hear students AND PROFESSORS AND HS TEACHERS. It truly does not even "teach" you anything. It gives you problems on problems and when you make the TINIEST. Mistake you have to repeat your hard work and lose a lot of credits. An example of this could be forgetting to put units or even maybe rounding wrong BUT. You have the correct answer. Its just not fair. I curse whatever school adopts this stupid learning assessment tool. It ain't about learning its literally Torture. There is not a day that I log on Aleks I spend at LEAST 7-8 hours doing my College assignment. I am paying more than 80 something bucks for this torture machine. I starve myself I get headaches BECAUSE OF THIS STUPID WEBSITE. I hope the CEO gets sued. I hope ALEKS lose all their money and profits. I hope they shut down and go out of business. I wish horrible wishes for this stupid company. I cant believe anyone would really want to be a part of this company. I get so frustrated doing the work and those stupid knowledge checks are so time consuming. We got other $#*! to do with our lives than to sit on a computer screen because we made a HUMAN ERROR?!?!?!?!? Like forgetting a unit symbol. If it was in person I KNOW no teacher will fail you because you forgot such intricate detail. It is so annoying to think this is a legitimate company benefitting off tortuturing students who use their sites. I never ever feel like I am learning I ALWAYS cheat on it because it is so pathetic. I cant imagine someone who doesn't cheat and sits down to do all the assignments by hand like omg Im literally crying rn because its INSANE this site and my stupid professor really still uses this site to assign HW and mandates it to be 10% of our overall grade. I hate this when I get older I am definitely suing and spreading more awareness and drag this stupid company down. If you are reading this you are NOT stupid.

I am a straight A student. However, ALEKS has significantly lowered my grade in the chemistry class I am taking. There are a lot of reasons.

First, the access card cost like a hundred dollars. That is a lot of money, especially for a college student like myself. A website like Khan Academy is way better, because it is free and you can watch videos if you do not understand the topics! ALEKS has no videos whatsoever, only vague explanations written out for each topic.

I waste literally hours a day on ALEKS. This takes time away from my 6 other classes, so I fall behind. It takes forever to learn any number of topics. Each topic usually has three to five problems to complete before you can move on. If you get a problem wrong, it takes away one of the problems you got right. REALLY?! If you get a problem right the next problem should not delete that progress! This takes so much longer than it should. What was wrong with the people who invented this garbage?

The quizzes are IMPOSSIBLE to do well on unless by sheer fluke you are able to get every part of every question right. The chemistry quizzes I take are usually about 6 questions long, and each question often has like five parts. If you miss one part, it blows the whole question and you get like a 50 or 60%. Miss one part of two different questions, and it gives you like a 30%. WHY DOES IT NOT GIVE PARTIAL CREDIT? That is no way to teach a subject.

It takes HOURS and HOURS to learn any significant number of topics, and then it randomly gives you a knowledge check. If you get a problem wrong on the knowledge check, you lose all your progress in that section and have to re-learn it, when ALEKS decides to let you, and then try to master it again. You just spent hours of your precious time only to be back where you started. What a waste of time! One problem should not decide how much you know in an entire topic. That is not how education works.

I do not understand how anyone is able to complete an ALEKS course. Unless you have a 100% understanding of each topic in a subject, and have dozens of hours a week available, you will not do well. This is a ridiculous expectation to have for students, especially college students, who are taking multiple classes and often working several hours a week.

DO NOT USE ALEKS. DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO AVOID IT.

Well, the basic information is provided in a very dry, hard to learn format. It you are not adept at looking at formulas and devining the information directly, you will have to practice, practice, practice. While ALEKS give unlimited practice ability, it is still poorly presented. Now onto the real issues. Often their program would leave out the necessary numerical data, or block your ability to work on the graphs. You had to log out of the internet, reload the internet, reload their program, then see if that fixed the problem. Often, it did for a few questions. Often, buttons required 2 to 4 clicks for response. Very frustrating. And using the calculator provided, if it even loaded onto your screen, was another challenge. Some functions were great to see a button for, but then the sort and sumation button would leave out a piece of the scanned data, from the center of data, so you could not have miss scanned the entry. And, again, buttons would not always respond when pushed. Often had to do double entry. And their calulator looks like it has a memory function, but does not! Only the one value placed in it stays. Try and add/subtract another and it replaces the first value with the new value.

Called our University Extension proctor who had little or no knowledge to assits. Told to email the Aleks support. Well, via email, they took 3 days to respond. Got their phone number, talked with a young lady who said-Using XP and Aleks, lets first check how many Java's are on your machine, Turns out 3. Deleted all and downloaded latest, Java 7. Tried Aleks again, failed intermittently again! She then said go to Chrome. Down loaded Chrome and new Aleks program. Tried and it failed. By then, stress headache, so called it a day.
Called the number only to get yet another unknown support person. She said that I had the wrong version of Java (just down loaded). Wanted an older one, Downloaded Java 6. Program failed again. She suggested Firefox. Did same. Failed intermittently. Said that my isolated case would be pushed "Upstairs".

Got an email within a day from Kelly Torres. Wanted me to try loading Firebox again, clearing machine of old version (just up loaded) and see what happened. Worked first time I tried, failed 2nd time I tried. Called again to get a 3rd support person, who said that Aleks had no issues, that it must be me, and I should quit the program, since I now had little trust in Aleks to take the Module exam for grade. Called my proctor to report such bad customer service/treatment. She was not in and returned the call 1/2 day later while I was at work, so missed the call. But she reported that numerous other students in my program were having similar issues, so Aleks is highly suspect of subterfuge regarding their oh so many software failures.

Attempted 2 more practice exams. Aleks worked the first, again intermittent failure the second. Now distrust the bad software even more. Seriously considering quitting, since such exam interruption will be considered, most likely, as cheating on my part, when it is Aleks failure! Oh, by the way, I have been getting 85 and higher on the practice exams, so would estimate an easy passing grade on the real one, only if Aleks software is in a good mood and does not leave out date, change numbers, block graph access, block calculator loading, button failure, etc. Hope to hear a response today (4/8/2013) from Proctor and from Aleks, but do not have much faith in Aleks.

Pros: None
Cons: Not Learning
Grades Used: Prep for College

Aleks has some awful online classes. Supposed to be brushing up on Algebra for college entrance tests yet it refers to rules by different names at different times (sometimes it's FOIL, sometimes, it's distributive property) which is confusing, the explanations are often only half complete using only a single example, and the questions are worded in the strangest ways. Not only that, but the formatting tools for the answers give away what the answer should look like.

This isn't teaching me so much as it's making me furious that I was assigned some dog-crap in this format. I cannot wait to be done with this, as I'm simply going through the motions just trying to complete it instead of focusing or even remotely enjoying it. And I actually love doing math, it's why I'm studying and want to learn more, but this is just infuriating.

Another frustration is if you're struggling with a topic, it will forcibly switch topics instead of giving you more practice, which you clearly need. It's like working with a tutor who has no patience for mistakes, which are part of learning. I have literally yelled "F*CK YOU" at my computer several times because of Aleks. I'm studying to learn, so mistakes will be made and as frustrating as ALEKS are, I don't need to be told when to give up, or that I'm not going to get it very soon.

More often than not I've had to turn to Youtube tutorials of people working out certain problems to hear or read a detailed explanation of how each mechanism should work, AND MORE THAN ONE EXAMPLE BECAUSE THERE'S SPECIAL CASES IN MATH, ESPECIALLY WHEN NEGATIVE NUMBERS COME INTO PLAY. Considering this is only Algebra, I will flat-out withdraw from college if I have to take another Aleks anything to get my degree, because I can only imagine how frustrating learning something as complex as Calculus could be with Aleks.

Aleks is the least rewarding, most frustrating "tool" I've ever used, and I mean it 100% that if doing more Aleks work is a requisite for my degree, I'll be changing my course plan to avoid all Aleks in the future.

I would only be more upset if I had to pay for this, instead of just have my time wasted by it.

I've had to use ALEKS, and it is extremely frustrating to use most of the time.

How it sees the user as 'learning' is inherently flawed. When you work on a topic, you need to get a certain amount of questions correct to progress. When you get a question right, you gain points and if you get multiple questions in a row correct, you get double the points. I wouldn't have many issues with this if it weren't for one fatal flaw: it takes away points when you get something wrong. The website punishes you for not understanding a question or making an error. To make matters worse, it doesn't tell you immediately what you specifically did wrong; it simply tells you you were wrong. You do have the option for an explanation, but it has nothing to do with your performance or what you did specifically. Of course, when you get all the points needed to progress, the website believes you have learned that topic and moves on. How much you've actually learned doesn't matter, but how many questions you get right does.

ALEKS also has a tendency to explain the topics it wants you to learn poorly. You're usually only given one (or two, on the rare occasion) way to go about solving a problem. If that particular way is confusing or inefficient for you, ALEKS doesn't do much else to help you. Sometimes its explanations are confusing in of itself, usually vague or only applying to one particular kind of problem that ALEKS may or may not give you. On many occasions, I've had to go to outside resources to properly understand what I'm supposed to be learning.

Another issue is that when you get a topic wrong one too many times, it tells you to stop and take a break and gives you another topic to try. The problem with that is if you only have so many topics, and you have trouble with all of them, you'll end up in a loop of failure over and over again. Apparently other people have had this issue as well. It's not as frequent as the other ones, but this one frustrates me to no end.

I'm sure the developers and everyone who works on ALEKS has good intentions, but this website does not encourage users like they think it does. It frustrates, it confuses, and it hardly does anything to actually help you learn math. I started online school a while ago and while I'm glad I don't have to deal with public school, ALEKS has me yearning for the days of a physical classroom.

Lemme preface this by saying every time I hear "we're going to use ALEKS in this class" I start to fear for my mental health. ALEKS drove me to very dark and unstable places last semester and the same is starting to happen this semester. Contemplating seeking counseling or finding out methods of self-therapy because if I don't, I will not survive this semester. Half of that is sarcasm, half not.

So the concept of ALEKS is decent, you take an initial Knowledge Check and then it presents you a list of topics you have to learn for your class and you have to do those topics by an assigned time. Sounds simple and easy. Man, does it absolutely FAIL at doing what it set out to do. Whenever you answer a question wrong on a topic, as others have mentioned, it basically resets you. You can get 3 questions correct in a row to move on, or you just have to get 5 points in general to proceed.

Losing points has never been more demotivating. Every time I set out to learn a new topic and got a question wrong, I lost my motivation faster than anything. I can't muster up the strength to go on, not kidding.

After completing each topic, you fill in a bit of the "pie" that you get with each section of topics you have to learn. That's about it for that. Oh, and sometimes you have to take periodic knowledge checks to see if you remember the topics you learned, and if you didn't, well, you gotta learn them again.

Now onto the way ALEKS actually teaches the topics to you. It is without a doubt one of the worst tools one can use to learn. Want to be inefficient? Want to totally not understand why some mathematical formula works? ALEKS is the thing for you. It does not give you shortcuts. Even after you read the initial learning page, it doesn't even SUGGEST any shortcuts. It presents the procedure in the longest and most arduous way possible. I had to resort to googling shortcuts after getting the very essential information down. It would help a LOT if ALEKS provided some shortcuts for some math problems.

Also, the "Another Explanation" just provides another problem and basically explains it in the exact same way as the previous problem. That's not what "Another Explanation" should do. It should instead change the wording, or find some other way to get the point across. Who thought just showing you another problem would be the perfect solution?

The stress ALEKS can bestow upon you has the possibility to totally depress you, or drive you so utterly insane that you have an actual mental breakdown and stop caring about life and the world. It's a personal anecdote so take that as you will.

For the love of your students' mental wellbeing, for the love of your wallet, for the love of ACTUAL EDUCATION, do not use ALEKS. I was forced to spend $128 (roughly) for a semester's worth of education via ALEKS. Yeah, I LOVE spending over a hundred dollars to essentially torture myself.

Do not assign ALEKS to your students. ALEKS will hate it and you (unless you're forced to by the school or facility you work for). Find something better. Like actually teaching.

Aleks took my kids and a wife in a divorce lawsuit. I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon and listen to reverbed screaming on repeat. In all seriousness, these are some of the reasons as to why i think that this site is an abortion:

1. There is typically no choice to not do it in a college level math class, especially at the university that i am going to
2. Aleks typically counts for 20-30% of your legitimate final grade
3. Aleks punishes you for getting a question wrong instead of excusing it or guiding you in the right direction, no matter how well you've done in the past. You got a perfect 15 concept streak with no wrong answers and you mistyped a variable? Good luck! It typically won't direct you to double check and will basically force you to do excessive work to fix that slipup, which is an additional number of questions on top of your already abysmal amount of work.
4. aleks is busy work and it does not conform to how students typically learn, by real time application, understanding and practice. 3-4 questions about a topic will be flashed that will seem easy, but good luck trying to remember it 15 topics after when it asks you to do a knowledge quiz. After you forget the concept, you now have to redo the entire damn thing.
5. the site is very buggy and as mentioned, it does not distinguish between mechanical errors, misclicks or mistypes 9/10 times. Saying 9/10 times is actually being too friendly to this disgrace of a website, it's more like 11 times.
6. good luck catching up if you like to procrastinate even in the slightest. Currently fighting the deadline for aleks (jan 25th) and it requires me to do 200 topics that i already understand from other assignments and practice sheets in my math class. Even without procrastination, you're looking at a solid 10 - 15 concepts a night constantly, probably sometimes on weekends.

To professors and teachers that use this program - it is likely that even your brightest students will wish death upon you for assigning aleks. Overall, as you can see, the site is buggy, lacking in informative procedure pertaining to whatever course you may be taking, and is constantly assigned as a massive chunk of your grade. I have to use this damned website for my chemistry class next semester. God help me.

¨JACK M. AND ALEKS ARE THE TWO THINGS IN THE WORLD THAT CAUSE SUFFERING. FIRST OF ALL, ALEKS IS A WASTE OF TIME. OUR SLAVE DRIVING TEACHER (JUST KIDDING) FORCES US TO DO THIS PAINFUL MADNESS 1.5 HOURS A WEEK! I AM SO SICK OF THIS CRAP!

AND JACK M., all you do is SPAM! ITS SO FRIKIN ANNOYING TO GO ON TO SCHOOLOGY, AND SEE YOUR SPAM AT THE FRONT OF THE CHAT. THIS IS A CHAT, NOT A SPAM BAR. IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR THAT, LOOK INTO JUNK MAIL. AND... EVERY TIME, MY COMPUTER CRASHES 'CAUSE OF ALL THE SPAM! IT'S A HUGE PAIN IN THE CRACK.

BACK TO ALEKS, IT IS NOT HUMANE TO PUT US THROUGH THIS, AND HEY, THIS IS ME TALKING HERE! SCHOOL IS NOT HUMANE IN GENERAL! I GET SO FED UP WITH "TRY AGAIN", AND "YOUR ANSWER IS INCORRECT" WELL I DON'T GIVE A *PAUSE FOR BAD WORD* ALEKS! AND WHOEVER INVENTED IT IS PROBABLY LIVING IN HIS GRANDMA'S BASEMENT FOR ALL I KNOW.

JACK, JACK, JACK, SO IMMATURE TO DO ALL OF THIS. THE ONLY THING MATURE ABOUT YOU IS THAT YOU ARE HONESTLY A NICE GUY. MY ONLY THING MATURE IS MY AMAZING PROFILE PICTURE... CHECK IT OUT SOME TIME. YOU HONESTLY NEVER STOP! I MEAN, I HATE ALEKS TOO, BUT DID IT HAVE TO GO TO A FRIKIN GOOGLE + PAGE!?!?!? I MEAN, COME ON HERE GUYS!

THE ONE PHRASE THAT COMES TO MIND WHEN I HEAR ALEKS IS "CHILD ABUSE." JUST SAYING THAT TIKO, AVINASH, AND TEJA HAVE A GREAT SERVICE PROJECT IDEA. ALSO, HOW CAN SOMEONE HAVE 10 HOURS AVAILABLE FOR MATH, AND ACTUALLY ENJOY IT, EVERY FRIKIN WEEK! (PARIN...) (BTW, NOT TRYING TO BE MEAN, JUST STATING THE OBVIOUS, YOU LOVE ALEKS.) HER'S A COOL FACT, ABOUT 95% PERCENT OF DEPRESSED AND EMERS- WELL, YOU KNOW, VICTIMS ARE LIKE THAT FROM ALEKS. IT MAKES CHILDREN GET A BAD INFLUENCE LATER ON IN LIFE. ALEKS IS ACTUALLY A PERSON IS MY THEORY. HIS IS EITHER A HITLER SUPPORTER, TRUMP SUPPORTER (EVEN WORSE), ISIS SUPPORTER, OR A SATAN SUMMONER WHO ALLOWS HIMSELF TO BE TAKEN. HE HAUNTS THE CHILDREN WHO DON'T DO 90 MINUTES A WEEK.

Here is a nice quote. Kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire kill it with fire
-as an ALEKS review. From user Seanfe P. From Reddit. Don't believe me? Here's the link http://www.ReviewFeeder.com/reviews/www.aleks.com
Copy and paste it, and then scroll down some. Review is by seanfe P.

THANK YOU¨ (Emerson Ohlson)

I never used ALEKS before but I see now I would never want to use that program ever again. It was built to reward people who are gifted to know numbers but punishes those who do not have a great grasp on it. This program was built for people who love math and do not work day jobs. It reminds me of having teachers that was nit-picky about how display the answer despite it being right anyways. I'm all over the place about how this is a poor program but to start it give you an unreasonable amount of problem to figure out. IfI have 100 lessons and have to figure 3 questions per lesson, that means I have 300 problems to do in a week. It doesn't seem terrible if you manage your time correctly but it defeats the purpose of wanting to finish it when it takes your point of away before being able to continue. The idea of having to get problem right 3 times in a row makes you push for perfection before excusing mistakes. It in fact makes you want to give up faster for not being perfect like the program demands you to. What's even worse is that if you aren't on that program within so many minutes or hours it makes you do extra lessons "in case you forgot" to refresh your memory as a knowledge check. I went from 70 lessons to 140 lessons in two days. I legit cried because You can spend 45 minutes on a lesson you do not understand when it should only take me 10. It does a terrible job of explaining different formulas introduced to you the first time. Rather than giving me different types of examples I may run into in the future I'm given 1 example for 1 type of formula. It may help at first but when I get to a problem that uses a 2nd type of formula that I wasn't told about and cannot figure out because it was never explained to me then my grade suffers for something I was never aware of. I've read reviews on this program just make sure it wasn't just me suffering from this thing and I realized that there a hundred of other people that share my same views on how terrible this program is. Overall please know that this program punishes you for being incorrect and it's not even rewarding when you get it right. I was in more of a hurry to get it done than to learn it. Please consider a different learning system because this one is absolutely incompatible.

Were to begin

Had to take aleks for a chemistry course at uconn. Whats worse than having to hours among hours of work, having to do it again since you rounded you significant digits wrong.

A list of some of the $#*! aleks pulls
1.) if you are filling out a chart of information, regardless of how big it is, if you mess up any part REGARDLESS OF HOW SMALL (you could simply round 0.00015 to 0.0001) it marks THE ENTIRE THING WRONG! Chances are you will spend atleast 10 minutes on ONE problem if its a chart and will get it all wrong because of something trivial like calling NH_3 nitrogen trihydride instead of ammonia.

2.) QUIZES ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO GET ABOVE A 70 ON!
Like i said above getting one little thing wrong will send set the entire problem as wrong, so if you are taking a 5 problem quiz and you rounded wrong or something trivial that no real person would ever mark wrong, you get the entire problem wrong. It tries to counteract this by hinting if you rounded wrong or dont have enough sig digs but it will DOES THIS SOMETIMES EVEN IF YOU ARE RIGHT, making you second guess yourself.

3.) OH GOD THE AMOUNT OF WOOOOOOOOOOOOORK!
Like other people have said aleks takes an enormous amount of time to do
Heres how it works
You have to complete an objective each week, each objective can be anywere from 0 to infinity topics (usually 30). Each topic is on a certain aspect of the course you are taking. You are required by aleks, regardless of how much you know, to complete at least 3 problems per topic, this means that you will usually have to do a minimum of 90 problems per objective, and this is ONLY IF YOU GET EVERY SINGLE ONE RIGHT WITH NO MISTAKES AT ALL.

If you get one problem wrong for any reason on a topic it make you do two more on top of what you already have to do, so its not un-realistic to have to do anywere up to like 15 problems on one topic. You will probably average around 7 meaning you will have to do 7 per topic coming out to 210 PROBLEMS A WEEK!
Its impossible to complete

4.) Aleks never mirrors what you do in class making it useless

5.) i didnt know someone could make me pay 120$ to be tortured.

To put it bluntly, it's very expensive, and it's certainly not worth the price. I had to pay for access for my course, and for the cherry on top, the redirect page to the access code didn't even work. It timed me out after redirecting too many times and now I have to contact their customer support just to resolve this dumb issue. What's better is that I'll have to wait until Monday to get this issue resolved as their customer support hours are weekdays only. 2 days of inability to access the course, and those 2 days are just creeping up on the deadlines.

You have these random questions you have to do with instructions provided, but the instructions provided are just halfassed or are completely irrelevant to what you are being asked. You could have a question with fractions in it and they'll show instructions only regarding whole numbers. It's really dumb. The most common example being a worded example, but the instructions 60% of the time are completely different than the question being asked. If you fail an assignment, you are given a chance to retry it, depending on your instructor, but the question undergoes the SAME layout with different variables, and the instructions are unhelpful as ever. That's just 1 mark off the assignment.

Most of the questions ALEKS ask, you WILL be needing a calculator. I cannot stress this enough. Don't follow whatever instructions they give you regarding WHEN you need to use the calculator. Almost all the questions they assign you, you'll have to use a calculator, yet the option to use their site calculator feature is gone on 99% of the questions.

It seems that every online based learning website has its heinous sins. MyITLab, Aleks, etc. It has its moments, but the negatives just outweighs the positive. You're better off googling how to do some of the questions rather than following the short, uninformative instructions they provide.

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ALEKS, some may hear this and think of the name of a young boy. But you won't hear a Childs name be ALEKS after this generation because of the pure hatred that anyone who has done this program has towards it. Every time that I get on ALEKS I feel literally no motivation to learn or understand the concepts. The way that this website is presented makes it feel like I am in a serialized asylum with padded walls and the only thing in there is a monotone robot giving math problems. After taking a survey of over 8 billion people it was a resounding **************999% that said ALEKS wanted ALEKS to be gone (note the **************00001% were the brain dead people on the school board who thinks this helps). Next let's look at what ALEKS costs 20$ per student a month, lets use some math skills here and say that there are 600 students per school (generously) that are using ALEKS and the amount of schools using ALEKS in the Westerville city schools district is 10/15. This means that the school board would be paying a minimum of 120,000$ just to get this garbage program to be used in Westerville alone PER MONTH. But maybe this is the reason that they don't want to get rid of it. There could be a bounding contractual agreement so that the school district does not have to pay as much and ALEKS gets to be exposed to many people. If that is the case END THE CONTRACT because not a single student in the Westerville school district enjoys ALEKS. I don't believe that ALEKS's idea is flawed but the way that it is executed is certainly poor and unfinished. One of the main areas of concern that changed ALEKS from 2 stars to 1 star is knowledge checks. After you spend around 5 hours on ALEKS it gives you a knowledge check, the first problem with this is it is time based and not lesson based meaning that the reach the 32 question quota for a knowledge check they may pull up old questions that you haven't review for days weeks or even months. Now this wouldn't be a problem if ALEKS had some sort of review system in place where the things that you learned in previous lessons can applied in new lessons but as of right now this does not exist. Finally the problem with knowledge checks is how far it sets you back, let's compare this to a video game if you will. In a video game the developers know that a player does not want to repeat large sections of the game so there are checkpoints in place so even a bad player can make progress. There have been times where on a knowledge check I have spent 5 hours to get there and the knowledge check sets me back 6 or 7 hours creating a endless loop of being stuck at the same percentage. This encourages the user to rush through lessons so that they can have a higher percent and avoid losing percentage due a knowledge check. I propose that there is a minimum score that you cannot go below (say 3-5% below what you were at before the knowledge check). This would mean that the user is able to test there knowledge on a subject and still lose some progress on the things that they do not know but also not be demotivated by losing hours upon hours of progress. I think that knowledge checks should be gotten rid of entirely but I know that is not realistic so I think if they keep knowledge checks there should be a review section that the user can chose to do before a knowledge check that will cover what is on it. This way the user knows that what they got wrong on the knowledge check they don't understand the concept and it's not that they forgot how to perform the action that the question is asking of them. I think this would help a lot to improve scores in general as most of the time when I lose percent on ALEKS it is due to me just forgetting a system or way to solve it but if I just have a quick refresher then I can solve it easily. My final point on knowledge checks is that at the end you don't know what the correct answers were and you don't know what you got right or wrong so it seems like a roll of the dice if you'll lose a lot of percent or not. Moving on from knowledge checks another thing is that there is no motivation to learn. I think that there should be some sort of built-in shop system, in there you can buy themes for ALEKS music maybe pets or even hints. However I don't believe it should work like ten marks where you can buy things that are not math related at all rather, I think that there should be more cosmetic things added (maybe even avatars). Next, with ALEKS I've noticed that there is really any corliation with what you do on ALEKS and what you do in class, this means that ALEKS feels very useless in a way because the things that you are doing on ALEKS feel separate from normal classes. A common argument that is brought up is that "learning these things will help you in the future in math". However due to the flawed knowledge check system and having no motivation to do ALEKS unless it is assigned I never retain the knowledge from these lessons and certainly not long enough to remember it years down the line. In conclusion, there are a lot of problems with ALEKS. It is crazy expensive, there is no motivation to learn, the knowledge check system is just flawed in many ways, and there is no correlation between ALEKS and class. If my suspicions are correct and the school board is bounded by contract to use ALEKS lets at least try and make it enjoyable. I have heard people in class say that "ALEKS makes me cry" "ALEKS is why my dad left me" "I'd rather die than do more ALEKS". I think if ALEKS were at least to get to a point where it didn't feel like torture, I'm not saying it even has to be enjoyable I just think there is a lot of improvements that could be made to not have students cry over pixels on a screen. That is all, I know that this review will do nothing and I actually wrote this in class when I was supposed to be doing ALEKS.

Trash I need 100 chacters soooo... cookies recipe 1 cup salted butter* softened
1 cup white (granulated) sugar
1 cup light brown sugar packed
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt***
2 cups chocolate chips (or chunks, or chopped chocolate)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and set aside.
In a separate bowl mix flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder. Set aside.
Cream together butter and sugars until combined.
Beat in eggs and vanilla until fluffy.
Mix in the dry ingredients until combined.
Add 12 oz package of chocolate chips and mix well.
Roll 2-3 TBS (depending on how large you like your cookies) of dough at a time into balls and place them evenly spaced on your prepared cookie sheets. (alternately, use a small cookie scoop to make your cookies).
Bake in preheated oven for approximately 8-10 minutes. Take them out when ALEKS are just BARELY starting to turn brown.
Let them sit on the baking pan for 2 minutes before removing to cooling rack.
When you remove the cookies from the oven they will still look doughy. THIS is the secret that makes these cookies so absolutely amazing! Please, I beg you, do NOT overbake!
**Butter. I use Kirkland Brand Salted Butter from Costco to make these cookies. I have also used Tillamook salted butter with equally excellent results. Unsalted butter would also be great. I just recommend tasting the dough to ensure that it's salted to your liking.
***Some people have said they think the cookies are too salty. Please be sure to use natural Sea Salt (not iodized table salt). If you are concerned about saltiness start with 1/2 tsp salt and adjust to your tastes. I always make it with salted butter and 1 tsp sea salt.
**Recipe information calculated based on this recipe making 36 cookies - 2 TBS of dough a piece)
All-purpose flour: Many readers have used gluten-free all-purpose flour with excellent results.

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ALEKs was truly a miserable experience. The program uses negative reinforcement in the worst ways possible. As someone who has struggled with mental health, depression, and anxiety, I can honestly say this class was problematic for my health. The program barely explains any of the concepts, and I basically had to google anything I couldn't figure out easily on my own. Getting questions wrong and being sent backwards feels terrible and so discouraging, I began to skip through questions I didn't know until I would get one similar to one i got right, this way I basically only had to learn one type of problem for a topic and ignore the others so I wouldn't lose my previous correct answers. The knowledge checks loom on your mind as another way you will be sent backwards to redo stuff you had already completed. You get no partial credit, you can do everything right but if you forget a negative sign you're going backwards. I really thought I was alone in my feelings for this program but please just google search "ALEKs reviews" and i think the third link I saw had 1,200 reviews saying all the same things I felt, it was very satisfying to see this when I finally looked it up as I was not the only one to feel this way. I think you should strongly reconsider using this program or at least do some more research about how people feel about it. I am lucky in that most of the stuff in my class was review, I went to a competitive high school and had learned all of this years prior but I often wondered while taking this class how someone with little knowledge of these concepts would fare in this class. I apologize for the rant and I am sure it seems a bit dramatic but I would not wish an ALEKS class on my worst enemies, it has been an incredibly frustrating semester not only for me but for my partner as well because of this programs very real negative impacts on my mental health. I think the only valuable insight I got from this program was a crash course in what not to do when it comes to UX/UI.

There is math, then there is ALEKS. Now you might be like "Oh! That is that one math website that my kids go on!" or, "That is what I have my math students use!" Now before you dive deeper into how good ALEKS is, STOP! Now actually consider what this is. Everyone who has used this as a student hates this. I don't know anyone who says, "Oh ALEKS is my favorite part of math class!" I have been on some really bad educational programs, but none of them compare to this. So many kids are sitting on a chair, melting thier eyes and numbing thier brains when ALEKS could instead doing that english essay! And yes, I do know that some of the blame falls on the teachers, but if ALEKS knows this, can't they make it more complatible for high school and elementary student alike? An AP class is easier than this! You spend half an hour on one problem, almost passing a much needed topic, and then... you miss the problem. A "point" on the topic is removed and you have to DO THE WHOLE THING ALL OVER AGAIN! And even worse, as a different type of problem for this topic. Then this poor student will have to spend more precious time on this, working late into the night. Finally he gets the topic done, and the result? The student learns nothing. He/she gets an A, but it is what you could call "empty". He did the work on ALEKS, but never really learned anything. The student has in the end, just wasted time and sleep. That time he needed for doing homework for other classes. That sleep needed to function properly as a growing teenager. Many times has my Mom come home, only to find me screaming and crying over the computer. To add how bad this can be, you need to be a, and no I am not kidding, a genius to figure out the explanations. Not to brag, but I am a smart person, but still it is a confusing and complex puzzle the explanations are. In the end, ALEKS is a waste of time, I would rather do my AP homework, it is unnecessarily stressful, and does not teach you anything. One thing to add, I have written what I feel about this (No, not on this website), and none of my complaints have been fixed, and that was too long ago!