High school and tertiary level institutions locally are embracing a new technology-driven educational tool, which administrators said they believe will better assist students in their learning.
ALEKS, which is Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces, is a web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system.
ALEKS uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and doesn’t know in a course.
In a telephone interview with Eyewitness News Friday, President of Bahamas Technical Vocational (BTVI) School Dr Robert W. Robertson said, that the technical and vocational school primarily uses ALEKS for Mathematics.
“ALEKS is a product we use for Math – a software system where you (the instructor or student) basically use to self-test yourself and then it prompts you to improve,” Dr Robertson said.
The school, he said, has been using the software program for the last two years and has seen the dramatic improvement in students’ math exam results.
“It’s increased improvement rates in Math by [probably] 25 to 30 per cent in our case, and we’ve used that for the last two years and it seems to be very effective and successful for us,” he said.
Dr Robertson confirmed that he approached the Ministry of Education about the success rate after using ALEKS and suggested its advantages, but according to him, nothing came out of that meeting.
Charles W. Saunders School and Government High School (GHS) however, informed Eyewitness New earlier in the week that they were pleased to announce the addition of the ALEKS program in their curriculum.
According to its website www.aleks.com, ALEKS works alongside students through any specified course and periodically reassesses the student to ensure that topics learned are also retained.
Avoiding multiple-choice questions, ALEKS focuses on enhancing students’ critical thinking and skills.
ALEKS also provides the advantages of one-on-one instruction, 24/7, from virtually any Web-based computer for a fraction of the cost of a human tutor.
Loading ...
