What Are Easy Topics to Do on Aleks
Aleks
Background
Aleks is a package that was developed under the auspices of the NSF, with the idea of providing an automated, web-based learning tool that would work adaptively with students to assess their weaknesses and offer practice exercises in exactly the areas in which they need them. Aleks gives each student an extensive diagnostic quiz in order to find weaknesses in their background, and then offers the student a variety of problems in the areas of those weaknesses. The student must subsequently solve several problems in each area of weakness in order to progress.
One important feature of Aleks is that it allows an instructor to monitor the progress of his students. By logging in to the Aleks web site as an instructor, one can see lists of students who have registered for a class, see how much progress they have made on their learning goals, and administer on line quizzes and other evaluation materials.
The Aleks interface is largely intuitive for anyone experienced in using a web browser. Aleks supports most modern browsers on Windows and Macintosh platforms, and it can be used on Linux machines with one important workaround. Some students will nonetheless have a bit of trouble with the technical requirements: since Aleks is entirely based on the Java programming language, the student's browser must have a recent version of the Java runtime environment installed. Typically this happens by default, but students on older computers, students who have disabled Java for security reasons, and students on non-Microsoft platforms may have trouble. Faculty machines in the Mathematics Department should all be capable of running Aleks - if you find a problem, please contact the systems staff.
Faculty Use
Aleks is based on a very large database on servers at the Aleks site. Thus, to use Aleks you must start by logging into that site at www.aleks.com. The initial screen appears as shown below.
Use the "login name" and password assigned by the company. It is important to note again that all of this authentication takes place at the company - Math Department personnel have no control over this aspect.
After you log in you should see a screen similar to the one below. Observe that there is a menu of task categories from which you can choose at left, and there is a short list of categories in the center. The list in the center duplicates the options at left to a certain extent. Note in particular the "How do I...?" menu at the bottom center. This will help you learn to perform a lot of basic tasks.
In general, the first thing you will want to do is to create a new course. The word "course" here refers to a database object, not the collection of notes and other instructional material that you think of as constituting a course. Remember always that for the Aleks software, a course is a collection of tables in a database that contain information about your students. To create the course, click "Create a new course" in the center of the page.
Give your course a name and choose the topics that the on line materials will cover. Aleks does not do Calculus; you will need to choose an appropriate Precalculus topic. A sample screen appears below.
When you click the "Save" button, the new course database is created on the Aleks servers. Note here that you must keep track of the course code indicated in red in the center of the page. This is the key to registration for your course. Students who do not know that number will not be able to use the Aleks site for your class.
You can customize a limited set of options for your course using the "customize this course" link at the bottom of the page. The image below shows the array of customization options.
Note that the textbook option is primarily so that you can make materials from a McGraw-Hill text available on line. Aleks is maintained by McGraw-Hill. The remainder of the options here are pretty intuitive. To return to your starting screen, you may click the Home navigation button at the left side.
On your home screen now you can see that you have a new message. Click the link to go to the message center.
The message center will allow you to communicate with students, and allows Aleks to communicate with you. It is in a standard email client format, though the messages are actually not email, in general. You can get to the message center at any time using the "INBOX" link that is always at the upper right corner of every page.
The new message you have is just a notification of the details of the course you recently set up.
Note that the course code also appears in all the course web pages you see as an instructor, in the upper right corner of the page.
This is all you need to do, or indeed, that you can do at the beginning of a semester. At this point, your course database is in place, and all you need are some students. Let's look next at what your students will see.
Students
Students will log in to the Aleks site using the same screen as faculty. The Aleks site keeps track of which accounts are for students, and which for faculty. Rest assured that they end up with a different view from yours.
Student indentities are also controlled by the Aleks people. They will supply student accounts which you will provide to the people in your class. When they log in, they will be invited to enter the course in which they eed to "enroll". Again, remember that enrollment here simply means creating records in a database, and associating them with the database information that the instructor enters.
After they are set up in your class, students see a tutorial to help them with the interface, students must do an on line assessment test. The idea is for Aleks to acquire information concerning the student's knowledge, so that Aleks can feed the student questions appropriate to the student. This way the student does not have to answer dozens of questions about topics she has not mastered. Instead, she ends up focusing on topics that are less familiar to her.
The interface using which the student answers questions will be fairly easy for students who have used equation editors to use. It also tolerates quite a bit of "Matlab" style input, for those who prefer to use keyboards over mice. There is an interface for creating graphs which is rather less intuitive, but Aleks provides tutorials and on-demand help for it.
Note that students can only be enrolled in one course at a time. They cannot switch from course to course. Aleks always remembers where a student is in the course material, and does not allow the student to be peripatetic. Whenever the student logs in, she is returned to the page she left when she logged off, and must answer questions correctly in order to advance.
It is important to note that the Aleks plugin has a bug on Linux platforms. Occasionally input into the Java interface (used for entering mathematical solutions) becomes disabled. When that happens, students should justclick the "Reload" button on the browser. This resets the Aleks Java interface and allows input again.
Students get an assessment report that shows Aleks' beliefs about their understanding of the topics at hand. The assessment is in the form of a pie chart indicating fractions of knowledge about individual topics, the quantity of material relating to those topics in the Aleks question database. Instructors have access to this same information about their students.
Students then choose some piece of the pie to work on, and face questions concerning that topic. When they get several correct answers to a certain type of problem in a row, then that bit of information is "added to their pie". They continue as long as they can stand, and then exit. When they return to Aleks, they are placed at exactly the question where they left, and cannot do anything until they answer that question.
Reporting
By clicking the Reporting link on the navigation bar at the left of your instructor screen, you may monitor your students' progress, or lack thereof. There is a summary screen as shown below.
By clicking the date in the summary chart for a given student, you can view the current state of his pie chart.
These are really the only views you have of the students routine progress: the summary report and the pie chart. However, if you wish to intervene more directly in the assessment chore, you can assign quizzes on line. This is done using the menu obtained by clicking the "Taking Actions" link on the navigation bar at left.
You can create quizzes over blocks of material that are important to your class at any time. Click "Create a Quiz".
You can name it and add some topics to be covered.
You can change point values for the questions asked, adjust the way in which it is made available, and so on.
When you are ready for the quiz to be taken by your students, you must allow it to be seen. Click the "Change how this quiz is made available..." link. You can then set the date for the quiz, make sure there is a link for students to follow...
... and set times and durations for the quiz.
Assessments are different from quizzes in that they do not cover set blocks of material. Instead they check your students' work relative to what they are covering now. Assessments are simply repeats of what the students did when they first logged in to Aleks. You may schedule assessments at any time, but remember that they take quite a bit of time to complete. Scheduling is again done by clicking "Schedule a new assessment" on the "Taking Actions" page.
Remember that you can exit Aleks at any time using the "Exit" link at the upper right of the page.
Source: https://www.math.wsu.edu/Aleks/Tutorial/
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