Aleks, Initial Exam, Assesment Exams, and course work. ACE credit.

[airricklee]

To make sure I am understanding the workings of Aleks correctly.

You take the initial assessment, and get a percentage.
The percentage then defines what coursework you need to complete to advance.
After you complete so much course work, you can do another assessment, if that assessment is above 70% you can get ACE credit?

What happens if you get over 70% on the initial assessment? Can you automatically apply for credit? or do you have to do the initial, then the assessment exam?

Thanks for any clarification,
Airrick

[inf]

Yes to all questions.

Initial Assessment = Score over 70, you can ask for credit right away by signing onto ACE and requesting course through their site. On a weekday, it will be confirmed within a few hours.

Score less than 70, you will need to either
1. Work on the pie chart until you automatically get another assessment, or you can log onto master account and request another assessment. Note that this assessment will never jump your score high (as in the first assessment), this assessment merely tests you on the stuff you worked on and you will raise your score a few points (don't expect a 20% to jump to a 60%), rinse and repeat.

2. Log onto the master account and change the course of your study. For instance, if you're working on statistics, change to something else like Algebra. Then log onto the student account then log back onto master and change it back to your course (statistics) again. You will get a new initial assessment when you log on the student account.

Option 2 is always easier as you will get a chance to jump from your initial % to 96%+ if you get everything right. If you continue the pie and do the assessment you will never be able to jump from 50% to 96% in one assessment test. Doing this option is exactly like getting a second chance on your initial assessment. If you ever score less than a 50% on initial assessment, I suggest you work the pie and once you feel comfortable with the whole subject, do option 2 and retake the assessment as a whole. I know you will start over but the chances of you scoring a higher % is greater.

Hope that clears it up.

[ndelco]

Yes to all questions.

Initial Assessment = Score over 70, you can ask for credit right away by signing onto ACE and requesting course through their site. On a weekday, it will be confirmed within a few hours.

Score less than 70, you will need to either
1. Work on the pie chart until you automatically get another assessment

Just to add to this ^^- it usually took me around 5/6 hours of work on the site or to complete around 20 new topics before I would get an automatic assessment. So don't be worried if it takes a while to get one.

Great breakdown of the process, lnf!

[jsd]

You can force a new assessment from the master account without re registering

[TrailRunr]

You can force a new assessment from the master account without re registering

This is just a regular assessment (not initial assessment) which will give you limited credit towards the 70%. I'd only do it if you were within 5%-10% of 70%.

The better way is to change course, log in to the student account (go to question #1 in the new assessment of the random course), then go back to the master to switch the course back and take another initial assessment.

Since we're talking switching courses anyway: to do multiple courses at once, it's OK to change course once you received 70%. You'll still get credit for it. Obviously this is for students already strong at math. If you're paranoid about this (I would be), do the harder course last. This is a good way for busy folks to get multiple math credits in one day.

[Old Guy]

2. Log onto the master account and change the course of your study. For instance, if you're working on statistics, change to something else like Algebra. Then log onto the student account then log back onto master and change it back to your course (statistics) again. You will get a new initial assessment when you log on the student account.

No. On the master account, just request a new assessment. I find that if you request a new assessment too soon you get a bunch of old questions you might not have looked at recently.

[TrailRunr]

No. On the master account, just request a new assessment. I find that if you request a new assessment too soon you get a bunch of old questions you might not have looked at recently.

That's just a REGULAR assessment which will grant a very limited amount of credit towards 70% whereas another INITIAL assessment by changing courses, starting assessment in the other course on question #1, and then changing back will give you another initial assessment where you can score anything from 0-100%.

[airricklee]

This is just a regular assessment (not initial assessment) which will give you limited credit towards the 70%. I'd only do it if you were within 5%-10% of 70%.

The better way is to change course, log in to the student account (go to question #1 in the new assessment of the random course), then go back to the master to switch the course back and take another initial assessment.

Since we're talking switching courses anyway: to do multiple courses at once, it's OK to change course once you received 70%. You'll still get credit for it. Obviously this is for students already strong at math. If you're paranoid about this (I would be), do the harder course last. This is a good way for busy folks to get multiple math credits in one day.

Just to make sure im following to maximum time and use, After reaching 70%, you can request your transcripts sent to ace, then go ahead and switch courses and start on the next one?

[cookderosa]

Just to make sure im following to maximum time and use, After reaching 70%, you can request your transcripts sent to ace, then go ahead and switch courses and start on the next one?

70% on an ASSESSMENT ONLY. Course (pie) completion doesn't matter.

[inf]

Just to make sure im following to maximum time and use, After reaching 70%, you can request your transcripts sent to ace, then go ahead and switch courses and start on the next one?

If your assessment score is 70%+, you can request credits at any time.

Also I do not recommend changing your course if you scored 70%+ and requested ACE credit UNTIL ACE adds that credit to your account because (last time I checked) ALEKs does not keep records of your previous course scores. IIRC ALEKS said you can but has requested that you screenshot that score before changing subjects just in case. But I would just be cautious and do not change subjects until ACE has those credits on your transcript. Don't worry though, ALEKs has ALWAYS added my credits within a few hours of requesting credits on a weekday. The most they ever took was 10 hours and that was because I requested it on a Sunday.


Let me break it down.

The Scores are represented by a number of topics in your field.
For example: Intro to statistics has 116 total topics.

Your initial assessment is based on these 116 topics that are randomly given to you as a form of 25 or so questions.
By completing these questions correctly you complete/master that topic. Lets say you get 17 or so questions correct on your first assessment out of the 25 given.
Let's say that when you log in you find out that you have mastered 81 out of 116 topics from that test. This is equal to around 69%. If you log in your master account and goto View Progress Report and click Percent, you can view this exact percentage.

(The above is an example score and might not be an accurate view of how the exact scoring works).

Since 69% is 1 percent short, you can work on your pie. Log back onto the student account and complete a topic correct twice to get 1%. Rinse, repeat several times and get +4%


When you log back onto the master account you will see this:

There are two score percentages and is color coded. Blue and Green.

Example: 69% + 4

69% would be in BLUE and 4% would be in GREEN. Which would equal 73% but note that your REAL score is still 69%!
BLUE (69%) represents content mastered based on the assessment and GREEN (+4%) represents progress made in learning mode.

The 69% (blue) represents your assessment score and this score reflects your REAL score, so if you scored 69%+4, ALEKs still views your score as 69. The +4 will be added once you complete another assessment.

TLDR: Only score that matters is the score in BLUE.
If you click on "Request new assessment", you will quizzed on the Green topics so it can be added on to your total score (blue). The best way to jump points if you scored low is to just switch classes and do the assessment all over again.