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This is the aspect of ALEKS that intrigues me:

• Adaptive, dynamically chosen small set of questions

• Details precisely what the student knows

• Constantly updated as work is completed

The idea of 'dynamically chosen' worksheets sounds good, but I wonder whether you gain anything you don't with a program like KUMON, where the worksheets aren't dynamically chosen. Saxon Math has students do the same worksheet many times during a school year, and I know from experience it works fine. You don't need a new mix of problems every time you practice.

On the other hand, even small gains in efficiency would add up over time.


formative assessment on wheels

Interesting.

Here's a link to the research/marketing paper ALEKS has posted on their web site:

ABSTRACT

This paper is adapted from a book and many scholarly articles. It reviews the main ideas of a novel theory for the assessment of a student’s knowledge in a topic and gives details on a practical implementation in the form of a software system available on the Internet. The basic concept of the theory is the ‘knowledge state,’ which is the complete set of problems that an individual is capable of solving in a particular topic, such as Arithmetic or Elementary Algebra. The task of the assessor—which is always a computer—consists in uncovering the particular state of the student being assessed, among all the feasible states. Even though the number of knowledge states for a topic may exceed several hundred thousand, these large numbers are well within the capacity of current home or school computers. The result of an assessment consists in two short lists of problems which may be labelled: ‘What the student can do’ and ‘What the student is ready to learn.’ In the most important applications of the theory, these two lists specify the exact knowledge state of the individual being assessed. This work is presented against the contrasting background of common methods of assessing human competence through standardized tests providing numerical scores. The philosophy of these methods, and their scientific origin in nineteenth century physics, are briefly examined.

Of course now I'm super-intrigued.....

This is all I need, right now. One more high-concept math-learning scheme.

Curiosity doesn't seem to kill cats, but it's going to be the end of me.


a parent's experience with ALEKS
ALEKS Graphic
formative assessment on wheels
ParentPundit uses ALEKS to fix Everyday Math
ALEKS question
ALEKS assessment coming right up

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Dec 2005

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