W'sMama--I'm so glad to know we're not the only ones who have noticed this about EPGY!! But I am sorry you're having difficulty. We have done pre-algebra and are now in the middle of algebra but have noticed a handful of instances when a problem is given before the lecture that explains how to do it--sometimes even right before. Also when we have commented on this, the tutor basically blows our comments off (sometimes rather snippily), which I find very irritating because 1) it's not cheap and we've only asked for actual help maybe two or three times in the almost year we've been doing EPGY and 2) if they took the comments seriously and fixed the problem, other people might not have the same issue later and given the number of people who take it they would probably have a 'perfect' program by now. But hey, why try to continuously improve your product when there's so little competition for online learning programs? (kidding...) Also we have noticed sometimes that the directions are unclear, resulting in DD wasting a lot of time answering the 'wrong' problem (for example, sometimes they want the entire set of factors written out, and sometimes they provide some and only want the missing factors, but the directions are ambiguous, which means you get it 'wrong' even though you had the right idea--but this doesn't affect your grade unless it's on a test, fortunately). Again, polite comments to that effect have been blown off, so we stopped commenting.
But those are my 'big' gripes; generally I think it's a good program, and I very much like that it will give you more problems in a particular area if you are missing problems and let you move along more quickly if you are not (at least that's what it's supposed to do, and it does seem to be that way).
I had originally hoped that DD would be able to do EPGY completely independently, but that didn't work so well (mainly she was daydreaming or goofing off unless I was there, despite her insistence that she really wants to learn new stuff--the whole thing was really her idea in the first place, so go figure). So I do sit with her and then she does pretty well generally, and enjoys learning the new ideas even if she finds some of the process to be boring from time to time. And I get to re-learn all this stuff too, which helps sometimes when something isn't clear to her, which doesn't happen too often but when it does it's good to be able to discuss it. So despite the issues and the need for me to be there too, I do think it's good for her, so it's worth it.
