About ALEKS

ALEKS always knows what each student is ready to learn.

ALEKS is an artificially intelligent learning and assessment system that has been used by over 25 million students for Math, Chemistry, Statistics and Accounting. After quickly and accurately determining each student's precise knowledge of a subject, ALEKS helps the student work on the topics they are ready to learn. ALEKS intelligence, content and software are unique and proprietary; they have been developed together, and work in unison. ALEKS digital content provides comprehensive course coverage. Students who do their ALEKS assignments are successful in their course!

Mini ALEKS Knowledge Structure
ALEKS Knowledge Structure

ALEKS Uses (Lots) of BIG Data

ALEKS artificial intelligence is developed using billions of data points from student interactions accumulated over 21 years of successful learning by millions of students. This data is the input that enables the ALEKS research and development team to perfect the intelligent machine responsible for ALEKS' unique ability to accurately and efficiently diagnose each individual student's knowledge and what they're ready to learn.

ALEKS Uses Machine Learning

The ALEKS machine has been trained to efficiently identify the exact topics each individual student has mastered, and which ones they are ready to learn, based on their answers to a small number of questions chosen by ALEKS based on their responses to all previous questions. When ALEKS offers the student a topic as ready to learn, ALEKS is almost always correct.

ALEKS Is Driven by Sophisticated Mathematical Cognitive Science: Knowledge Space Theory

Using breakthrough work in mathematical cognitive science, ALEKS has developed advanced software that accurately places the student within a space of trillions of feasible knowledge states. Hundreds of academic papers on Knowledge Space Theory have been published in peer-reviewed journals by leading cognitive scientists and mathematicians. Much of this work is summarized in the three books pictured here.

Knowledge Space Book Learning Space Book Knowledge Space Book

ALEKS in Action

ALEKS intelligence uses machine learning based on Knowledge Space Theory to efficiently develop and maintain a detailed map of each student's knowledge. ALEKS knows, at each moment, with respect to each individual topic in the course, whether the individual student has mastered that topic and if they are ready to learn it now. ALEKS facilitates super-effective learning by offering the student a selection of the topics that they are currently ready to learn. Since the student is always working at the boundary of their current knowledge, ALEKS students are not frustrated or bored as they are when they work on material that is too easy or too hard for them. Instead, the student's confidence and learning momentum build as they are challenged by, works on, and then masters each new topic.

How ALEKS works YouTube video play button

As Students Learn, ALEKS Keeps them Motivated

As the student masters each new topic, the student's progress is shown to them as filling a pie. As each new topic is learned, students are motivated as they progressively fill their ALEKS pie. The ALEKS pie is divided into slices for the various branches of each subject. In ALEKS, students always work at the boundaries of their current knowledge.

ALEKS Avoids Multiple Choice

Using ingenious student input tools, ALEKS replaces multiple guess with authentic problems that require the student to understand, learn, and master the topic. ALEKS developers and subject matter experts are accomplished in developing easy-to-use input tools that align perfectly with the subject matter.

Graphing Tools

Superior Content Works Synchronously with ALEKS Artificial Intelligence and Software

Educators with collective decades of classroom experience collaborate on content designs that work harmoniously with ALEKS intelligence and technology. Each topic is designed with detailed consideration of its role in the ALEKS course. Student learning, assessment, pedagogy, usability, and reading level are just some of the factors that go into designing ALEKS content.

Data on Student Learning Success is Continually Scrutinized to Improve ALEKS Content and AI

Because of ALEKS' powerful artificial intelligence, students are almost always successful at learning the material ALEKS offers them as ready to learn. One way we measure ALEKS success is with student learning rates. We utilize statistics containing billions of anonymized student interactions to measure how often students succeed at learning a concept that ALEKS offers them as ready to learn. From evaluation of this prodigious quantity of data, we are confident that when ALEKS determines that a student is ready to learn a concept, the student is able to master it at least 90% of the time. In many ALEKS course products this success rate is greater than 95%!

ALEKS Learning Pie

ALEKS Uses Artificially Intelligent Learning and Assessment to Guide Students to Course Mastery

ALEKS Knowledge Checks automatically confirm and enhance retention, creating a continuous cycle of learning and assessment. Research shows that retrieval practice is one of the most effective ways to move things from short term to long term memory. ALEKS student input tools and expert AI are the ideal way for the student to retrieve what they have learned on the exact best topics at all times.

ALEKS has Powerful Reports

ALEKS provides a trove of real-time, detailed reports, which provide educators and parents with detailed up-to-date information to observe how their students are progressing.