TOS Crew Review - ALEKS

ALEKS is a complete online math program for grades 3-12. ALEKS stands for Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces. It is designed to be used independently by the student, and acts as a personalized "tutor" - taking the stress of teaching math off of the homeschooling parent!


Both Isaac (age 9.5, 4th grade) and Ezra (age 8, 3rd grade) used ALEKS as their exclusive math program during the month we had for review. Before starting, both took an assessment which helped personalize their programs to their own skills and weaknesses (super cool, in my opinion!). Their lessons were broken down into two main parts - the "My Pie" page, and "QuickTables".

"My Pie" gives the student the freedom to choose which topics they'd like to cover each day, and also supplies a visual on how far they've come in various areas of math (such as Geometry, Fractions, Algebra, etc). The "pie" is basically a chart with different color wedges, with each wedge representing the different areas that their assessment showed them as ready for.

The student clicks on whatever topic they're interested in, and then given a practice problem to try. If the material is new to them, they simply click on"Explain" to have the concepts for the problem explained and the problem itself walked through step-by-step. Then they can go back and practice similar problems. After a few correct practices, they've "mastered" that particular topic and their piece of that portion of the pie grows to show progress.

The boys loved the visual of watching their pie pieces fill in! They also liked being able to choose their own topics to study each day. The one struggle they both had was that the explanations are only written - there is no audio. Occasionally, they would get stuck on something until I came and read or re-explained the problem to them, and having that auditory assistance helped things "click". So for students that are highly auditory, this might be a drawback to the program. Otherwise, they were generally able to "master" 1-3 topics in a 15-20 minute lesson time span.

The "QuickTables" were their favorite part of the program. ALEKS recommends doing QuickTables about 3 times a week, but I allowed the boys to do them every day. Afterall, if they enjoy it and it is reinforcing good math skills... why not? :-) QuickTables is basically like flashcards, only much more than just flashcards. To start, the student takes an assessment so the program can determine which math facts are mastered and which need work, as well as how fast the student can type. Then they are presented with a color-coded chart that shows their progress.

With math facts that have not been mastered, the student can pick which ones they would like to practice, and after a few practice tries, are given a timed round to see how quickly they can recall the new facts, as well as ones that were previously covered. This method of recall really works wonderfully! Again, the visual nature of the color-coded chart really inspired my children to keep trying to fill in as many squares as they could, by mastering their math facts! After a set time of practice in QuickTables, the student can then play a few games, which are determined by how far along in their QuickTable they are. This time can be set by the parents - I required 10 minutes of QuickTables practice before a game was allowed, and set the time limit of games to 5 minutes. The games themselves are really just another version of quick math-fact recall, but the kids still thought they were a lot of fun! I saw tremendous improvement in both boys' math fact skills in the month that we used QuickTables, which is awesome!

Now, on to my portion of the ALEKS website - the Master Account, which is the parent's account used to monitor the child's attendance and progress, create Quizzes, and set controls such as the time limit I mentioned above in QuickTables. Honestly, I have never come across a parental monitoring website that is SO user-friendly as ALEKS Master Account. I had been nervous about the boys doing math all by themselves, picking whatever topics they wanted to cover, without any input or involvement from me. How would I know what they decided to learn each day? How could I tell if they stayed on task? How were their QuickTables going? The ALEKS Master Account made it incredibly easy for me to find out all of these things and more. Here is a screen shot of the main Master Account page to give you an idea of how uncomplicated it is to navigate:

And here is an example of the student's attendance report generated from the Master Account:

By clicking on each topic, I could see what the boys attempted each day, which topics they actually mastered, and which they needed to work on a little more. Through the Master Account, I was also able to view their Pie chart, their QuickTables, request new assessments, and create and track Quizzes. Creating a quiz was really easy - since ALEKS keeps track of all the topics the child has mastered, a quiz based on what they've learned was easy to generate in just a few clicks. The next time the student logs in, their quiz is ready and waiting for them. The parent can put a time limit on the quiz, and the results of the quiz are emailed to the parent as well as links to the incorrect problems and the student's attempted answers! Even though ALEKS made math very "hands-off" for me, I never once felt like I was unaware of what my children were learning and how well they were doing in their progress. The Master Account made this connectedness very easy!

I know this review has been a bit long-winded, and for that I apologize. However, I felt it was difficult to do a program this comprehensive justice in just a short snippet - I wanted to be sure to give as many details as possible. We all really enjoyed reviewing ALEKS!! If your brain went numb from trying to read everything I've written, to make it a little easier for you, here's a quick 2-minute video tour of ALEKS.

I do have to say, however, that the one downfall for us was expense. Here is the pricing chart:

• $19.95 per student, per month
• $99.95 every 6 months
• $179.95 for one year
• A Family Discount (for multiple children) is available

Since each student needs to have their own account, and there is no "reusable" aspect to this program (as there would be with a more traditional text book or computer based math program - of course, it is difficult to compare ALEKS to a more traditional math program, since ALEKS is very personalized to each individual student.), for a family our size, right now, unfortunately, the cost is prohibitive. My one wish is that access to QuickTables was available to purchase separately, because we really loved that portion especially.

However, the good news for you is that just by reading this review, you can have a FREE one-month trial to give ALEKS a try! Free is always a good place to start, and then you can determine for yourself if ALEKS would be a valuable asset to your homeschooling! Just click on the banner below to get started:

To see what other members of the TOS Homeschool Crew thought of ALEKS, be sure to check out their reviews at the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog.

Disclaimer: I was given this product specifically for the purpose of reviewing here on my blog as a member of TOS Homeschool Crew. I received no other compensation in regards to this review.