ALEKS brings The University of Memphis a new way of teachingsome fundamental math, replacing more traditional chalk-and-lecturemethods with a more high-tech approach.
If ALEKS has his way, fundamental math courses in thetraditional sense of lecture settings and Scantron tests may be athing of the past.
But ALEKS, an acronym for Assessment and Learning usingKnowledge Space, is no human.
It's an Internet-based course program that, according to itsdevelopers, revolutionizes the way students learn and progressthrough the semester.
The program is capable of handling business statistics,psychological statistics and fundamental math courses.
Developed at the University of California-Irvine, ALEKS is aproduct of engineers and scientists who aimed at tailoring thecourse to the specific learning abilities of each student.
"The reason I'm excited is because it's different from thetraditional class," said Xiangen Hu, psychology professor at TheUniversity of Memphis.
Hu is the first professor at The U of M to take advantage of theprogram and insists that it far exceeds the capabilities oftraditional classes.
"If I could teach one student, I could do better than it(ALEKS), but if I'm teaching 30 students then this (ALEKS) is muchbetter," Hu said. Professor Hu teaches about 95 students inpsychological statistics with the intelligent tutoring program.
The process is easier than traditional classes and is far morecost effective.
The program does not require a textbook and significantly cutsdown on the amount of paper used during the semester.
Students meet with their professors at the beginning of the yearto obtain registration information and guidelines for the course.After the initial face-to-face meeting between teachers andstudents they may only meet two more times during the semester fora computer lab and final test.
During an initial assessment, the program asks specificquestions to measure how much the student knows and what mathskills they possess.
Students then progress through the program incrementally.
Students must show mastery of each section before they can moveon to the next.
The program is completely paced with the student's learningabilities. If that ability happens to be high, a student could befinished with the class well before the finals for other classesbegin.
"I'm going to try and finish it before the other finals andstressing over it," said Jeffery Waters, sophomore psychologymajor.
Waters works full-time while attending The University and saysthe self-paced environment is perfect.
"With my hectic schedule it allows me to do things at my ownpace," he said. "And it makes learning math, something that wasboring, quite easy."
Professors can track how much time students spend learning thetopics and see what topics they must next conquer.
Hu has taken the tutoring one step further.
Any question a student has about the material can be e-mailed toHu directly on his mobile Internet device, allowing round-the-clockhelp.
"Sometimes I login at two in the morning and I see someone onthere," said Hu.
"I like the program because you can continue to read theexplanation until you understand it," said psychology major SylviaTurner.
The University of Memphis is discovering this program ratherlate according to Hu.
About 150,000 students are already using ALEKS across the nationin classes ranging from kindergarten to the 12th grade.
The IIS, Institute of Intelligent Systems, located at the FedExInstitute, is one of the most advanced in the nation, according toHu. The IIS is working on its own tutoring system called auto-tutorfor physics and has already released a program for computerliteracy.
