Home With Purpose: ALEKS: Personalized Math Instruction

The latest educational product we've had a chance to try out through the TOS Review Crew is ALEKS. What is ALEKS, you ask? I'll let the company answer that question straight from their website:

Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces is an online mathematics program that provides personalized learning and assessment tailored to a student's individual needs. Using artificial intelligence and adaptive, open-response questioning, ALEKS quickly and accurately determines what a student knows and is most ready to learn within a course. Learn more by watching a quick 2-minute video.

With a comprehensive course library ranging from elementary school math to complex subjects such as PreCalculus, ALEKS acts much like a human tutor to help take the stress off of homeschooling parents.

ALEKS offers highly-targeted, individualized instruction from virtually any computer with Internet access, making it a comprehensive and mobile education solution for students in grades 3-12. A subscription to ALEKS offers access to all courses and students may take as many courses as needed during their subscription period.

So, the basic concept is that the software responds to the student and adjusts the curriculum to target areas that he or she needs more practice in. When a student initially signs in, they are guided through a 30 minute initial assessment to determine their knowledge. Once this is completed, a pie chart is created to show areas that have been mastered and areas that need work.

Besides the grade-level specific programs, ALEKS also offers QuickTables, a research-based math fact mastery tool for multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction for grades 3 and up.

Both the Dancer and Karate Kid are in the right age range for ALEKS, so I signed them both up for accounts for our trial period. To be honest, they both have a math program that is working great for them, so I wasn't sure how useful ALEKS would be to us, but we gave it a go.

Things we like:

I really like how the program adjusts to each student, making it completely individual. This is a major plus in my book! After all, this is one of the things we homeschoolers love about home education...the ability to individualize the curriculum!
The reports are fantastic. Very detailed and thorough.
The ability to earn college credit.

Things that weren't such a good fit:

There's no audio option. Both kids are strong readers, but they both, especially Karate Kid, benefit from both hearing and reading the material. Watching and listening to an explanation of a concept or the solution to a particular problem, works well for them. With ALEKS, the student must read everything to themselves. The Dancer can do this, she just prefers to have both. Karate Kid struggles to complete a lesson like this, where there is no interaction at all besides reading and entering an answer. He does much better with something more interactive.
For some reason, the site runs slow on both computers we tried it on. Both kids were frustrated at how long it took to complete a lesson, not because of the material, but because the pages took so long to load.

Other factors to consider:

This is a very academic, no-frills program. You won't find fun avatars, cute mascots, or humorous word problems on the pages. It's strictly business. And of course, this is exactly what some are looking for.
The cost for more than one child, even with the family discount, is fairly steep.

A subscription to ALEKS costs $19.95 a month, $99.95 for six months, or $179.95 for twelve months. As I mentioned, a discount is available for multiple children.

There's no doubt that ALEKS is a solid math program. It's very thorough and well thought out. We'll definitely continue to use our trial. Karate Kid is benefitting from the QuickTables drills, and since the Dancer has already finished her math program and won't start a new one until fall, ALEKS is providing her with some great review and practice in the meantime. The best way to decide if it's a good fit for you and your children is to take advantage of the free trial:

Visiting the company website is worthwhile as well...it's packed with information! You can also check the crew blog to see what other home educators are saying about ALEKS.