I agree with chris1234 but there's another angle: I also want to comment that ALEKS can indeed seem pretty dumb at times with the geometry construction questions! We encountered the odd bit of weird buggy behaviour, as well as several things that just seemed odd. I forget which topic it was, but there was something where in order to get your answer counted correct you had to do two things in one particular order whereas in real life both orders would have exactly the same effect, and there was another fairly similar case though I'm not remembering what it was... It can also take a while to realise that it's only when the lines light up that ALEKS is recognising that you're pointing in the right place, so you can end up with a figure that looks fine but isn't.
Your DS is older, but with mine, I did sometimes help him, in learning mode, by doing the actual mouse-guiding for him while he told me what to do. I think is reasonable for youngsters doing ALEKS: the real skill in the end is to do it on paper, which requires a different application of motor skills, so the part ALEKS is teaching is the knowing what to do, anyway. We did keep the "no help during assessments" rule inviolate and he did eventually get through all these topics!
More generally, I dunno. Maybe asking him questions might work better than giving explanations - the Socratic method?
