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Research Behind ALEKS
ALEKS stands for "Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces." The
research behind ALEKS is briefly discussed in non-technical terms in "The Assessment of
Knowledge in Theory and in Practice"  (PDF
355K).
ALEKS is the practical realization of Knowledge Space Theory – the
result of ground-breaking research in mathematical cognitive science initiated
by Professor Jean-Claude Falmagne at New York University (NYU) and the
University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Professor Jean-Paul Doignon at the
University of Brussels. The core mathematical theory was created between 1983
and 1992 with the financial support of several National Science Foundation (NSF)
grants to Falmagne at NYU and UCI. (Learn more about the National Science
Foundation at www.nsf.gov.)
Knowledge Space Theory is authoritatively set forth in Falmagne and Doignon’s
monograph, Knowledge Spaces, published by Springer in 1999. A brief list of key scientific research
publications is available.
Other scientists joined the efforts to investigate Knowledge Space Theory,
and currently more than three hundred scientific papers and several books have
been published on this subject. A bibliographical database is maintained by Cord
Hockemeyer at the University of Graz in Austria: http://wundt.uni-graz.at/kst.php
In 1992, Professor Falmagne obtained a large NSF grant for the development of
the ALEKS educational software based on Knowledge Space Theory. To this end, he
assembled at UCI a team of software engineers, cognitive scientists and
mathematicians. Among them, Nicolas Thiery, Eric Cosyn and Damien Lauly are
current officers of ALEKS Corporation. The Corporation was founded in 1996 by
Falmagne and key members of his development team to implement, maintain, and
further develop the software on the internet and make it available to K-12 and
college students. The ALEKS software has been granted by UCI to ALEKS
Corporation under an exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license.
The complex educational software based on Knowledge Space Theory is capable
of efficiently and accurately assessing knowledge in various disciplines,
ranging from mathematics and the natural sciences to selected topics in business
and the social sciences.
In contrast to standardized tests, which typically result in numerical
measures of achievement or “aptitude”, the outcome of an ALEKS assessment
consists in (i) the precise and comprehensive delineation of an individual’s
competence in a subject in the form of his or her knowledge state
describing all the types of problems mastered by that individual, and (ii) a
comprehensive list of the topics the individual is ready to learn (referred to
in Knowledge Space Theory as the outer fringe of that
individual’s knowledge state).
ALEKS
course products are currently being used by hundreds of thousands of students
annually in over 40 courses ranging
from Grade 3 Mathematics to Precalculus at over 1,000 K-12 schools and
higher education institutions throughout the world. ALEKS course products can be
accessed on a free trial or on a subscription basis from the home
page of this site.
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