When a student logs into your ALEKS class for the first time, they are going to complete an ‘Initial Knowledge Check.’ This is a low stakes, baseline assessment that gives you, the instructor, insight into everything the student knows on Day 1.
The Initial Knowledge Check will adapt to the individual student. ALEKS will adjust its questioning after each answer the student submits. For example, if a student answers a question correctly, ALEKS can identify all the skills required to have gotten that question right. With one answer submission, we can make sometimes dozens of inferences about a student’s knowledge gaps and skill set.
ALEKS is a free response system, with an emphasis on replicating the pen to paper experience. The Initial KC will be up to 30 questions. A best practice is to have students complete this on Day 1 in class if possible. We encourage students to take their time and do their best.
Once completed, both you and the student will have a precise picture of what the student knows, doesn’t know, and most importantly, what he is ready to learn. Students’ faces light up when they realize that ALEKS is giving them credit for topics they already know.
ALEKS will help you get to know your students earlier than ever before! We know every student comes in with varying levels of knowledge and readiness for your course. The adaptive Initial Knowledge Check (as well as subsequent Knowledge Checks they’ll take) will continuously personalize the student learning path to get them through the material as efficiently as possible.
After students complete their Initial Knowledge Check, they’ll get a first look at their ALEKS pie. The pie is a visual presentation of a student’s current knowledge state and tracks progress throughout the course. Each slice of the pie represents a different category of the course. Within the slice, the colored portion shows content that students have mastered, and the gray area shows what they will learn over the course of the semester. If students click on a slice of their pie, they can see how many topics they have mastered, how many they have learned, and how many remain.
After students complete their Initial Knowledge Check, they’ll get a first look at their ALEKS pie. The pie is a visual presentation of a student’s current knowledge state and tracks progress throughout the course. Each slice of the pie represents a different category of the course. Within the slice, the colored portion shows content that students have mastered, and the gray area shows what they will learn over the course of the semester. If students click on a slice of their pie, they can see how many topics they have mastered, how many they have learned, and how many remain.
The pie is also a great visual for you, the instructor, to see exactly where your class is in their knowledge state, on day one. For institutions without a placement exam, or with flexible placement based on multiple measures, this insight also provides an opportunity to identify at-risk students and intervene before it’s too late. It can also pinpoint students who may have been placed too low, based on a high percentage of topics mastered during the Initial Knowledge Check.
The ALEKS Timeline provides students with a clear view of their learning path and what goals they will meet along the way.
In the left navigation pane, students will always have insight into goals and assignments they are currently working toward. Here, the student is working on an assignment created by the instructor. You can see the number of topics to complete and the due date. All students will need to learn the 29 topics by the due date, but ALEKS will personalize the work based on their current knowledge state. Some students might need to work on prerequisite topics before they can even begin the assignment topics. Others may already have credit for some of the assignment topics prior to starting.
The goal of these visuals is to fuel students’ motivation by providing them with direction and insight into their daily work and overall progress on course goals.
When students are ready to work, ALEKS will guide them on their path of Ready to Learn topics. For each topic, students will first see a Learning Page.
If you’re using a McGraw-Hill text, the corresponding author videos, eBook, and other resources are easily accessible. You have the option to add your own resources as well. If you’ve created videos or other tools for students, you can tag them at the topic level in your ALEKS course, and students can also easily access from the Learning Page.
If you’re using a McGraw-Hill text, the corresponding author videos, eBook, and other resources are easily accessible. You have the option to add your own resources as well. If you’ve created videos or other tools for students, you can tag them at the topic level in your ALEKS course, and students can also easily access from the Learning Page.
One thing that separates ALEKS from other systems is that students will only be presented with topics that they are “ready to learn”. ALEKS has gathered and analyzed data from millions of students in order to continually understand how topics are related. Based on what a student currently knows, ALEKS can pinpoint which topics a student has at least a 94% chance of being successful on… these topics are deemed the “ready to learn” topics.
The main goal of providing students with topics that they have a minimum of 94% chance of success on is to boost students’ confidence and motivation, and of course, to keep them engaged with the material.
Students can navigate the ALEKS topics through the Learning Carousel. By opening the carousel, students will see topics for their current objective. Topics that students are Ready to Learn will be unlocked. Students can simply select one of these to work on from the carousel.
Students can navigate the ALEKS topics through the Learning Carousel. By opening the carousel, students will see topics for their current objective. Topics that students are Ready to Learn will be unlocked. Students can simply select one of these to work on from the carousel.
Some topics that appear in the Learning Carousel may be locked. This occurs when there are topics that the student is not Ready to Learn yet. These topics cannot be accessed by the student until necessary prerequisite topics are learned. A lock icon appears in the topic card to distinguish the topics that cannot be accessed.
If a student wants to know which topics they need to do before they can work on the locked topic, he or she can click on the lock to reveal them.
Once a student begins working on an ALEKS assignment, you’ll notice they have a progress bar here in the upper right-hand corner.
The spaces will fill in as students answer questions correctly to represent their progress on the given topic.
ALEKS asks students to demonstrate that they understand a topic by doing it multiple times at varied levels of difficulty, ideally without using the help aids, unless they really need them. This is to ensure that they are truly learning the topic and not mimicking a procedure.
Should they need it, students can access an Explanation to see a walk-through of how to do the problem, and its solution. If they do access the Explanation, ALEKS will then give a new iteration of the problem for the student to attempt. If the student answers the problem correctly, the progress bar will fill up one space. ALEKS is typically looking for students to successfully work through three practice problems without using help. Sometimes it takes more practice, and sometimes less. How does this compare to your current system?
If a student answers the next problem correctly as well, ALEKS will give them double credit; again, aiming to keep students motivated and building confidence. Students quickly learn that they are more efficient if they attempt the problems in earnest rather than using the help aids as a crutch. But of course, the support is there if they need it.
As students learn in ALEKS and complete their work, they will experience celebrations and moments of encouragement. Our student interface research taught us that students who were less confident in their math ability were motivated by “small wins” throughout their assignment.
These positive reinforcements are prevalent throughout ALEKS to motivate and encourage each student to be successful. The celebrations also remind students of their progress on their current assignment to keep them focused on their goals.
One final thing to note while learning in ALEKS is how the questions change in meaningful ways. In addition to replicating the pencil-paper experience of working math problems, ALEKS also ensures that students really master and understand a topic. So, when the problems algorithmically generate, they do so in a way that students can’t game by mimicking a procedure. There are hundreds of problem iterations, so each change is just enough to help students truly learn it!
ALEKS expands on the confidence that students build completing topics in Learning Mode by providing them with a chance to prove mastery and retention of concepts during Knowledge Checks.
Knowledge Checks occur when a student spends 5 hours in ALEKS and learns 20 topics. This personalized check assesses whether students have mastered and retained content topics they’ve recently learned. These checks serve as a great review and can properly prepare students for exams.
Topics that a student demonstrates mastery of on a Knowledge Check will move from the “learned” category to the “mastered” category in the ALEKS Pie, which will increase the colored portion of the pie slices. Topics students did not retain will stay in the “learned” category, and simply require some additional practice.
It’s this cycle of learning and assessment in ALEKS that boosts student confidence and their exam scores. Students must complete a topic’s practice problems multiple times without using help aids, and then show retention of the topic on their knowledge checks. Because of this cycle, we see homework scores correlate directly with test scores. We also see students perform better not only in the current course, but also in subsequent courses because they’ve proven true understanding of the material.