Mc graw hillReviews 1,887

This program is absolutely horrible. As some have already said, teachers who utilize ALEKS are simply in need of a crutch. My math teacher at Orange Coast Community college can't speak English and this online course makes her class just THAT much more unbearable. The examples are weak, they don't teach you. They purposefully try to trick you by switching around answer slots. They strip your progress from you after you make a mistake. I am not learning. I'm using other sites to help me with solutions that SHOULD be explained to me in this expensive course. If your teacher tells you that you have to pay for aleks, DROP THE CLASS.

This is such a waste of time, it easily drops me down a letter grade in each course that I have it in. You're so damn focused on getting the correct answer each time, that you don't even learn. Oh, you missed a problem? Well lets set you back about 4 more just to screw you over! I have 12+ hours of this each week on top of the regular homework and studying for the test. All this website ends up being is a giant chunk of time where you focus so much on getting the answer correct and fail to learn a single thing. The only other thing I think of while taking this course is that I still have homework and studying to do!

The explanations give no insight on how the problems should actually be done and if there is its usually something with a bunch of extra work. Also as much as it's great to master something mastering 248 lessons isn't doable. Every week I end up doing countless hours of the same problems that I understand conceptually because I can't get 3+ correctly in a row. Then the knowledge checks take things away from my pie leaving me with even more work to redo. I get it I need to know how to do something but this isn't the way to learn. Even my chem professor questions some of the way alecks attempts to teach a lesson (yet we continue to use the program). All this program is causing me is stress and hatred towards my chem class. It's too much work in too little time on top of the rest of the things I have to get done. The program has helped me very little in comparison to how many times I've wanted to punch my computer. I don't recommend for anybody to use this.

I've only been forced into this for a few weeks, but already I absolutely hate it. You start off with a knowledge check with things ridiculously difficult, then the actual review is like it's for 5th graders. I'm a sophomore in high school. It feels like ALEKS is an excuse for teachers to do nothing. I never felt like I learned, especially since according to ALEKS, 'mastering' a topic is just answering 2 questions. If you fail enough, they either solve it for you which does nothing, or just makes you give up on the entire topic. None of it is for older students, and I was just incredibly BORED with it.

I actually used to enjoy math. It does not always come easy to me but learning the concepts and getting stuff right is rewarding. My university now uses this as a crutch, hiring $#*!ty foreign professors who can barely speak english and making us buy this. ALEKS is now my math professor, my physical professors are just there so the school can point at them when I ask what I'm paying for (because you know... ALEKS is a seperate charge). I would literally pay extra money to take a course that does NOT use this program, even if it meant more class hours or homework. That is how much I hate this program.

This is honestly a tremendous waste of time. Not only does it doesnt give any detailed or explanation of how to do the problems. But it actually punishes you if you get it wrong. If you do the topics and get two questions right but one wrong, it actually erases youre effort and you have to do it again. Then there is the interim assessments which tests you on past knowledge. This can result in erasing hours of work since most people don't remember concepts. Then after you finish everything you have to do a final assesment which tests you on the entire topics. The problem is that if you don't get it all right 100%. You have to do it all over again! This can result in an endless loop where you can never get it done.

Had to use this at Penn State. They use your knowledge test score to place you in math classes. Once I transferred I thought I got rid of it for good, what a horrible headache it was. Boy was I wrong. My new school started using it as a review for Calculus 1 and we have to complete 70 % of the topics we don't know. They absolutely SUCK at reviewing material and helping you understand it. It is HELL! Don't ever put anyone through this.

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 they 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 has an amazing reward system built into, and i couldn't stop working on the assignments (literally!). Basically how it works is if you get a question right then you're overjoyed to find that the system doesn't believe your right and you get to go back and do the question all over again! But my fav part is if you answer so many questions wrong at one time, then the system blocks you out completely allowing you to go jump off a bridge, hang yourself, or get creative with any power tools in reach. I f*****g love this program!

This is by far the WORST teaching/learning tool I have ever used. I had to complete an over the summer review chem assignment, and I hadn't taken chem in over 2 years, so I needed a refresher on a lot of the content. When you need help with a problem, the explanation does little to no help whatsoever. It's an excessively long explanation that is confusing and does not make much sense. Answers are very finicky to type in, and one time the program wouldn't let me advice as it claimed I had used a letter that the system didn't recognize... the letter I had used was an "s". Stay away at all costs, I would not recommend this software to ANYBODY.