Figure 6.26: Select Textbook

ALEKS provides a flexible range of options for organizing the material of a course, with or without the support of a textbook. These options may be chosen either when a course is created ("Add a Course") or added to an existing course ("Edit this Course").

In the Course Set-Up Wizard the page for Textbook Integration, Custom Objectives and Modules appears immediately following the Basic Information page. Here you can make several choices about the structure of your course, the first being whether to integrate a textbook or not.

Textbook Integration. If you choose the option to use a textbook with ALEKS, you must choose this textbook from the list of available choices using the dropdown window. ALEKS will automatically place chapter and section references to this textbook on the explanation pages.

One choice in the list of textbooks is the "ALEKS curriculum," which is a division of the topics based on the slices of the ALEKS pie chart rather than chapters of a textbook. This choice enables student learning to be structured without the use of a specific textbook.

Next, select one of the following options:

Chapter-based Objectives with optional Custom Objectives

If this option is selected, you will be able to choose entire chapters from the textbook as Objectives for your course, and set due dates for these Objectives (Sec. 6.3.3). This is the most efficient way of directing student learning in ALEKS. You can also create custom Objectives to split chapters into multiple Objectives or combine material across multiple chapters into single Objectives.

Both these types of Objectives will include all ALEKS topics that correspond with the chapter.

All Modules (Custom Objectives)

If this option is selected, you will need to create all of the Objectives for your course manually. This option provides the instructor with the greatest control over the course structure.

No Objectives or Modules of any kind

If this option is selected, students will see references to the textbook, but the textbook will not direct their learning.

NOTE. If you choose any of the options for structuring Objectives in your course, whether by textbook chapters, custom Objectives, or a combination of the two, topics will not be included in the course unless they are included in one of your Objectives. It will be possible, however, to remove topics after they have been included as part of a chapter or custom Objective (Sec. 6.3.8). This is relevant when you wish to structure your course based on textbook chapters, but do not want to include everything that ALEKS would normally have as the content of a particular chapter. If only Custom Objectives are used, it will not usually be necessary to do further customization of the content.

Without Textbook Integration. If no textbook is integrated within the course, no textbook will be referenced in ALEKS, and you will only have the choice of the following two options:

All Modules (Custom Objectives)

If this option is selected, you will need to create all of the Objectives for your course manually.

No Objectives or Modules of any kind

If this option is selected, student learning will be guided by ALEKS without Objectives.

See the following sections for additional detail on the choices outlined above.