In some ways, planning a course in which ALEKS is to be used is simpler than planning other kinds of courses. The instructor may assume complete freedom in planning lectures, lessons, and assignments, while ALEKS ensures that students can progress toward mastery regardless of their level of preparation. It is neither necessary nor helpful for the instructor to attempt to constrain the interactions of the ALEKS system with individual students. To the extent that students will be working independently in ALEKS, the content of lab classes is provided by their work in ALEKS, and need not be planned separately. Instructors wishing to give their students the greatest possible benefit from using ALEKS, however, can use its features to plan focused small-group instruction from week to week (See Sec. 5).

At the same time, it is extremely important to make ALEKS an integral part of the course requirements and grading scheme. There is no other single factor which influences the success of students using ALEKS so much as the time that they spend on the system, along with the regularity of their use. This means that the students must be required to spend a suitable amount of time in ALEKS on a weekly basis, say 2-4 hours, that they must be informed of this at the very beginning of the course, and that the instructor must monitor their fulfillment of this obligation. Moreover, the amount of time required must be carefully determined to be reasonable, and in balance with other requirements for the course. The instructor should not simply include an ALEKS requirement without reducing in corresponding measure the other requirements that the students would have had to fulfill without ALEKS. For example, the quantity of homework problems may be reduced, as the students will be solving problems in their ALEKS sessions. In a sense, the ALEKS requirement is stricter than others, since the instructor knows exactly what time the students have spent, and the students will naturally be sensitive to this. With time, students will realize the benefit that they receive from ALEKS, and its effect on their overall grades. At first, however, it will be simply another requirement, one whose communication requires particular thoughtfulness on the instructor's part.

Obviously these are only suggestions, and experienced instructors may well choose approaches that will be more effective with their own students. The underlying idea is that there must be clear, formal support for the use of ALEKS, however that support is best implemented in a particular setting.

Many instructors have found that in order for the ALEKS requirement to be meaningful, it may beneficially be made part of the grading system or system of rewards for the course. The simplest approach is to provide a certain number of points toward the final grade for each week that the student fulfills their required hours. It is advisable to reward each week, so that the student does not fall into the expectation that all of the required hours can be done at the end; consistency should be rewarded, along with total hours. If a student falls short of the specified hours during a particular week, that week is not rewarded, but neither is the "deficit" carried forward; the next week begins with a clean slate (the primary concern is regular use of the system; for this reason a surplus is also not carried forward). Proportional rewards are also possible; each hour spent has a point value, up to the required minimum.

In order to effectively monitor the students' use, the instructor should check the hours on the "Learning progress since latest assessment" page (under "Reporting"). This page can be printed out every week for record-keeping. In very rare cases, students will try to fool ALEKS by logging on to their accounts and doing something else; this can be detected by noticing that the number of items gained per hour is far too low (or null). ALEKS will log the student off if there is no activity after a certain amount of time. Instructors can obtain a precise record of a student's actual work in ALEKS by viewing the student's Report ("Reporting"/"Report for a single student in this course (pie chart)"), under "Learning Log."

The students' achievement in ALEKS (as opposed to their use of the system) may also be used as a component in their final grade. For information on how to do this please see Sec. 14.